João Guassi Moreira

João Guassi Moreira serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he directs the Computational Developmental Neuroscience Lab. His research bridges developmental psychology and computational neuroscience to investigate how youth acquire cognitive, affective, and social skills in complex environments.

Dr. Moreira's work centers on three interconnected domains: emotion regulation, risky decision-making, and social interactions with specific partners. His lab employs multimodal methodologies including functional MRI, naturalistic text analysis, and ecological momentary assessment, combined with advanced computational techniques from computer science and behavioral economics. This approach reveals hidden structures of the developing mind that traditional methods cannot capture, with emphasis on adolescent and young adult populations exposed to early adversity.

Analysis of his recent publications shows a strong trajectory toward computational modeling of developmental phenomena, particularly neural mechanisms underlying emotion regulation typologies, social decision preferences, and adversity impacts. His work increasingly integrates large-scale consortium data (e.g., ABCD study) with novel statistical frameworks to predict developmental outcomes and advance methodological rigor in neuroscience.

The Computational Developmental Neuroscience Lab actively collaborates with international consortia and develops open statistical tools to enhance reproducibility in developmental science. Current projects focus on neural representations of social value, inflammatory impacts on emotion circuits, and computational signatures of resilience following early adversity.