Cynthia Wu is a PhD student in Stanford’s Psychology Department studying how affect-related brain activity shapes engagement with movies and other media. She integrates brain imaging, behavioral experiments, and computational modeling to understand how emotional experiences unfold during viewing and influence hedonic decisions.
Her research investigates how dynamic affect-related brain activities guide attention and decision-making over time during continuous media exposure. By combining multimodal data, she aims to develop tools that help content creators craft emotionally rich media that resonates authentically with audiences.