Max Owens

Max Owens is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida, specializing in cognitive and clinical psychology research. His work focuses on understanding cognitive risk factors for depression, anxiety, and related disorders using behavioral and neural measures such as eye tracking and EEG/ERP. He investigates attentional control, emotional processing, and neural mechanisms underlying psychopathology to develop targeted interventions.

His research integrates multi-method approaches to study attentional biases, reward responsiveness, and neural reactivity in clinical populations including children with suicidal ideation, self-injuring individuals, and those with PTSD or substance use disorders. Owens collaborates on projects involving parent-child interactions, maternal criticism effects, and developmental neuroscience.

Key areas of focus include:

• Neural correlates of depression and rumination
• Attentional biases toward emotional stimuli
• Reward system dysfunction in clinical groups
• Developmental trajectories of psychopathology markers

His work has produced 25 peer-reviewed articles since 2016, with recent emphasis on ERP studies and translational research applications. Owens' research has direct implications for developing novel therapeutic strategies targeting cognitive and neural mechanisms of mental disorders.