Skye Napolitano, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral researcher in the Changing Affect with Neuroscience and Technology (ChANT) Lab, directed by Dr. Andrada Neacsiu, at Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Napolitano trained with Dr. Dan Foti in experimental design and EEG and Dr. Sean Lane in quantitative psychopathology while earning her Ph.D. at Purdue University. She completed her APA-accredited clinical internship in the Affective Neuroscience track at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she worked with Drs. Crystal Schiller and Flavio Frohlich in clinical trials and neurostimulation. Her research examines why emotion regulation becomes inflexible or “stuck” across forms of psychopathology and how these processes can be measured and modified. She is particularly interested in the interplay among subjective time, affective and reward processing, and autonomic regulation, with the goal of identifying mechanisms that can be targeted to restore regulatory flexibility.

Dr. Napolitano uses multimodal psychophysiology and experimental methods, including EEG, heart rate variability, ecological momentary assessment, and noninvasive neuromodulation such as TMS, to examine these mechanisms. She also employs longitudinal, multilevel, and Bayesian modeling to capture within-person dynamics, quantify uncertainty, and characterize individual differences that can be obscured by group-level averages. Her current work spans transdiagnostic emotion dysregulation and misophonia and integrates mechanistic research with clinical trials. Ultimately, her research program aims to develop mechanism-informed, scalable approaches that combine neuromodulation with behavioral strategies to help people respond more flexibly to emotional challenges.