Erin Maresh is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona, working with Dr. Jessica Andrews-Hanna in the Neuroscience of Emotion and Thought Lab. Previously, she received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia, where she worked with Drs. Jim Coan and Bethany Teachman, and completed her clinical internship at the Minneapolis VA. Broadly, she researches the contexts and conditions under which internally-guided, self-focused thought is maladaptive, both for individuals experiencing self-focused thought and for their friends and relationship partners, using EEG and fMRI to identify the neural mechanisms behind these processes. In particular, she is interested in the relationship between social anxiety and activity in the default mode network. She is additionally interested in exploring the opposite end of the self-focus spectrum — situations characterized by an absence of self-focus, such as states of flow, experiences of awe, and meditation.
