Welcome!

I am a research psychologist graduating with my PhD in Clinical Science from the University of Southern California (USC) in June 2025.

Currently, I am a Psychology Intern at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.

In Summer 2025, I am starting a research postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California—Irvine (UCI) School of Medicine in the Noel Drury, M.D. Institute for Translational Depression Discoveries.

About

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sicarden@usc.edu

I am a psychology researcher. I will graduate with my PhD in Clinical Science from USC in 2025. I am finishing my American Psychological Association-accredited clinical internship at UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. I will be starting a postdoctoral fellowship conducting research in the UCI School of Medicine starting Summer 2025. In addition to my research and coursework, I have facilitated psycho-educational classes for high-risk parents through my lab’s community-research partnership with Eisner Health, an agency providing health services to under-resourced families in Los Angeles.

I completed my BAs in Psychology and Art (practice) at the University of California, Los Angeles (2016). After graduation, I spent two years working as a Post-baccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA) Fellow in Dr. Ellen Leibenluft’s lab at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). At NIMH, I studied the pathophysiology and treatment of childhood psychopathology.

My research uses interdisciplinary methodologies to assess the intersection of biological and social processes impacting parent caregiving behaviors. My research follows two lines of inquiry. In one line of inquiry, I use neuroimaging and hormonal assays to clarify neurocognitive and endocrine processes supporting caregiving, focusing on fatherhood. In my second line of inquiry, I use self-report measures, sleep actigraphy, and neuroimaging to assess how socially modifiable health behaviors (e.g., accessing paid family leave following the birth of a child, sleep quality) relate to parent caregiving behavior.

Publications

2025

Cárdenas, S. I. & Callaghan, B. (accepted). A call to integrate measures of environmental context into research on maternal brain. [Special issue]. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

León, G., Waizman, Y., Cárdenas, S.I., Aviv, E., Newsom, P., Vaccaro, A., & Saxbe, D. (2025). Trajectories of depressive symptoms from pregnancy across the first year postpartum in COVID-19 pandemic vs pre-pandemic samples; Relationship quality buffers pandemic-associated increases in distress. Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science.

2024

Haller, S.P., Stoddard, J., Cárdenas, S.I., Domibek, K., MacGillvray, C., Zapp, C., Bui, H., Stavish, C.M., Kircanski, K., Jones, M., & Brotman, M.A. (2024). Differentiating neural sensitivity and bias during face-emotion processing in youth: A computational approach. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, nsae034. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsae034

Cárdenas, S.I. Waizman, Y.H., Truong, V., Sellery, P.E., Stoycos, S., Rajagopalan, V., & Saxbe, D.E. (2024). White matter structural remodeling across the transition to fatherhood. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 67 .https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2024.101374. https://osf.io/xm6h8/

Waizman, Y.H., Herschel, E., Cárdenas, S.I., Vaccaro, A., Aviv, E.A., Sellery, P., Goldenberg, D., Kaplan, J.*, & Saxbe, S.E.* (2024). Neural correlates of inhibitory control in first-time fathers listening to infant cry and paternal postpartum mental health. Behavioral Brain Research, 465, 114947. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2024.114947

2023

Cárdenas, S.I., Tse, W., León, G., Kim, A., Tureson, K., Lai, M., & Saxbe, D.E. (2023). Prenatal testosterone synchrony in first-time parents predicts fathers' postpartum relationship quality. Hormones and Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2023.105440

Aviv, E., Cárdenas, S.I., León, G., Waizman, Y., & Saxbe, D.E. (2023). Prenatal prolactin in first-time fathers predicts brain and behavioral adaptations to new parenthood. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 156, 106332. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2023.106332

Saxbe, D.E., Martínez-García, M., Cárdenas, S.I., & Waizman, Y. (2023). Changes in left hippocampal volume in first-time fathers: Associations with oxytocin, testosterone, and adjustment to parenthood. Journal of Neuroendocrinology, e13270. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/jne.13270

2022

Cárdenas, S.I., Morris, A.R., Marshall, N.A., Aviv, E., Martínez-García, M., Sellery, P., & Saxbe, D.E. (2022). Fathers matter from the start: Role of expectant fathers on child development. Child Development Perspectives, 16(1), 54-59. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12436

Haller, S.P., Cheng, G., Kitt, E., Smith, A.R., Stoddard, J., Abend, R., Cárdenas, S.I., Revzina, O., Coppesmith, D., Feldman, J., Leibenluft, E., Brotman, M.A., Pine, D.S., & Pagliaccio, D. (2022). Reliability of task-evoked activation during face-emotion paradigms: Effects of scanner and psychological processes. Human Brain Mapping, 43(7), 2109-2120. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.25723

Martínez-García, M., Cárdenas, S.I., Pawluski, J., Carmona, S., & Saxbe, D.E. (2022). Recent Neuroscience Advances in Human Parenting (G. Gonzáles-Mariscal, Ed.). Patterns of Parental Behavior. (239-267). Springer. 2 Goldenberg, D., Marshall, N.A., Cárdenas, S.I., & Saxbe, D.E. (2020). The Development of the Social Brain within a Family Context (J. Decety, Ed.). The Social Mind/Brain – A Developmental Perspective. MIT Press.

Marshall, N.A., Kaplan, J., Stoycos, S.A., Goldenberg, D., Knoddam, H., Cárdenas, S.I., Sellery, P., & Saxbe, D.E. (2022). Stronger mentalizing network connectivity in expectant fathers predicts postpartum father-infant bonding and parenting Behavior. Social Neuroscience. 17(1), 21-36.s https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2022.2029559

2021

Naim-Aricha, R., Smith, A., Cheu, A., Dombek, K., Shaughnessy, S., McNeil, C., Cardinale, E., Agorsor, C., Cárdenas, S., Brooks, J., Pine, D.S., Leibenluft, E., Brotman, M.A., Kircanski, K. (2021). Using ecological momentary assessment to enhance irritability phenotyping in a transdiagnostic sample of youth. [Special issue]. Development and Psychopathology, 33 (5), 1734-1746. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579421000717

Cárdenas, S.I., * Corbisiero, M.F., * Morris, A.R., & Saxbe, D.E. (2021). Associations between paid paternity leave and parental mental health across the transition to parenthood: Evidence from a repeated-measure study of first-time parents in California. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 30, 3080-3094. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-021-02139-3

Cárdenas, S.I., Stoycos, S.A., Sellery, P., Marshall, N.A., Khoddam, H., Goldenberg, D., & Saxbe, D.E. (2021). Theory of mind processing in expectant fathers: Associations with prenatal oxytocin and parental attunement [Special issue]. Developmental Psychobiology, 63(5), 1549-1567. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.22115

Saxbe, D.E., & Cárdenas, S.I. (2021, November 8). New York Times. What paternity leave does for a father’s brain. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/opinion/paid-family-leave-fathers.html

2020

Cárdenas, S.I. (2020, September 3). New center headquartered at USC Dornsife studies COVID 19’s effect on families. Dornsife. https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/3303/center-for-the-changing-family-covid-19-research/

Khoddam, H., Goldenberg, D., Stoycos, S.A., Horton, K.T., Marshall, N.A., Cárdenas, S.I., Kaplan, J., & Saxbe, D.E. (2020). How do expectant fathers respond to infant cry? Examining brain and behavioral responses and the moderating role of testosterone. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 63(5), 1549-1567. DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsaa051

Haller, S. P., Kircanski, K., Stringaris, A., Clayton, M., Bui, H., Agorsor, C., Cárdenas, S.I., Towbin, K.E., Pine, D.S., Leibenluft, El., & Brotman, M. A. (2019). The Clinician Affective Reactivity Index: Validity and reliability of a clinician-rated assessment of irritability. Behavior Therapy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2019.10.005

2018-2019

Cárdenas, S.I. (2019, March 22). The ABCs of evidence-based therapies (EBTs) for children. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/home-base/201903/the-abcs-evidence-based-therapies-ebts-children

Cárdenas, S.I.*, Brooks, J.*, Clayton, M.*, Perhamus, G.*, Perlstein, S.C.*, Ross, A. J.*, Roule, A.*, Vinograd, M. (2018, September 18). Breaking into open science: A primer on publicly available datasets for graduate students in clinical science. The Behavior Therapist Association for Behavior and Cognitive Therapies, 41(6), 291.

Cárdenas, S. I., Khaled, M., & Saxbe, D. E. (2019). Commentary on translational impact: From individual to dyad to triad to social group: Applying the group actor–partner interdependence model to research on the transition to parenthood. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 5(4), 402–404. https://doi.org/10.1037/tps0000204

Current Work

In my current research, I examine the relationship between neighborhood characteristics and pregnancy-related anxiety in a primarily Hispanic sample (Cárdenas et al., in prep). I measured neighborhood characteristics using the Childhood Opportunity Index (COI). My preliminary findings suggest that expectant mothers with fewer neighborhood opportunities (e.g., a neighborhood with less access to education, health care, and social support) report less pregnancy-related anxiety about having a child with medical complexities. Although my findings appear counterintuitive, they offer nuanced insight into the current understanding of neighborhood-level characteristics related to pregnancy-related anxiety. Moving forward, I seek to continue integrating cutting-edge methodologies, such as the COI, to thoughtfully consider the intersection of parent neurobiology, mental health, and structural inequity.

To support this work, I have applied for grant funding from the University of California (Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program), UCLA Psychology Department (T32 Program on Biobehavioral Issues in Mental and Physical Health at UCLA), UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior (T32 Training the Science of Child Mental Health Treatment ), Yale Psychology Department (Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema Postdoctoral Associate in Integrative Psychology), and Yale Child Study Center (Kavli Institute for Neuroscience, T32 Postdoctoral Fellowship in Childhood Neuropsychiatric Disorders).