Bio

Ruohan's research centers around understanding the genetic and environmental mechanisms supporting infants' and young children's socioemotional development through the lens of developmental cognitive neuroscience. Her PhD research focused on uncovering he neural and caregiver correlates on infants' emotion-perception neural circuitry during live interactions in typically developing children using electroencephalogram (EEG). At Stanford, she is pursuing research questions using a combination of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and EEG to identify the endophenotype of the neural anatomy and function in children with rare genetic conditions such as neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) and Noonan Syndrome (NS) differ from typically developing counterparts, and explore how such neural differences may lead to unique developmental trajectory of social communication.

Professional Education

  • Doctor of Philosophy, University of California Davis (2026)
  • Master of Education, University of Virginia (2020)
  • Bachelor of Arts, University of Wisconsin Madison (2018)

Stanford Advisors

Contact

  • Academic
    rhxia@stanford.edu
    University - Scholar Department: Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Position: Postdoctoral Scholar

Additional Info

Lab Affiliations

All Publications

  • From screens to live interactions: Considerations for naturalistic EEG paradigms in social and affective neuroscience DEVELOPMENTAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE Xia, R., Frenkel, T. I., Bowman, L. C. 2026; 81: 101795

    Abstract

    Live, naturalistic, interactive electroencephalographic (EEG) paradigms have increased over the last 20 years, reflecting a movement towards ecologically valid measurement of the actual stimuli and responses theorized to support human brain and cognitive development. A challenge to this growing field is that many analytic decisions are at researchers' discretion, and there is a lack of clear standards for reporting and justifying decision-making processes, and a lack of understanding how different analytic decisions may affect results. These circumstances threaten study replicability, transparency, and accuracy. Thus, necessary objectives are to bring awareness to this existing analytic variability, empirically evaluate its effects, and ultimately develop guidelines for optimally applying different analytic approaches. The present study takes an important first step toward these objectives. We review studies using live, interactive EEG paradigms published between 2006 and 2026, and identify several analytic approaches that vary widely: 1) analyzing EEG across longer conditions versus shorter, discrete events, 2) considering influence of amount of usable EEG, 3) inclusion of covariates, 4) whether to examine all electrodes across the scalp versus targeted electrodes, and 5) determining appropriate baselines for comparison to target EEG activity. We discuss considerations for these different analytic approaches, and evaluate their effects in 4- to 6-month-old (N = 35) infant EEG data from a novel, live, naturalistic mother-infant interactive task. Results reveal that different, often arbitrarily selected analytic approaches can change EEG results. We recommend standards and best practices in reporting analytic decisions to increase transparency and replicability, and suggest strategies for determining optimal analytic approaches.

    View details for DOI 10.1016/j.dcn.2026.101795

    View details for Web of Science ID 001869522600001

    View details for PubMedID 42691579

  • Parental emotionality is related to preschool children's neural responses to emotional faces. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience Xia, R., Heise, M. J., Bowman, L. C. 2024; 19 (1)

    Abstract

    The ability to accurately decode others' facial expressions is essential for successful social interaction. Previous theories suggest that aspects of parental emotionality-the frequency, persistence and intensity of parents' own emotions-can influence children's emotion perception. Through a combination of mechanisms, parental emotionality may shape how children's brains specialize to respond to emotional expressions, but empirical data are lacking. The present study provides a direct empirical test of the relation between the intensity, persistence and frequency of parents' own emotions and children's neural responses to perceiving emotional expressions. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded as typically developing 3- to 5-year-old children (final Ns = 59 and 50) passively viewed faces expressing different emotional valences (happy, angry and fearful) at full and reduced intensity (100% intense expression and 40% intense expression). We examined relations between parental emotionality and children's mean amplitude ERP N170 and negative central responses. The findings demonstrate a clear relation between parental emotionality and children's neural responses (in the N170 mean amplitude and latency) to emotional expressions and suggest that parents may influence children's emotion-processing neural circuitry.

    View details for DOI 10.1093/scan/nsad078

    View details for PubMedID 38123451

    View details for PubMedCentralID PMC10868131

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3723-5770