RESEARCH questions
All our research projects are united by a set of common questions about how emotions are instantiated by the brain and body and how they unfold within the context of human culture. Our Current Projects use a set of tools from psychology, neuroscience, and psychophysiology to address these questions. We are interested in how the basic psychological and neural processes that contribute to human emotion may vary across the lifespan and how they contribute to health and wellness. See below for core questions addressed by the lab.
THE brain basis of emotions
A major emphasis of our research is on understanding how the rich variety of human experiences emerge from the workings of the brain. Our research has revealed that emotions are supported by large-scale neural networks spanning the whole brain. These networks support very basic mental processes that are not specific to emotions (representing body changes, memory and knowledge, deploying attention), but functionally connect to produce experiences of anger, anxiety, and other emotions. Our current research on the brain basis of emotions is supported by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Mind and Life Foundation and examines how these networks function to contribute to mental well-being and adaptive emotional decisions from childhood through old age.
THE ROLE OF THE Body IN emotion
Another major emphasis of our research concerns the role of the peripheral body in emotions. Our research has shown that a person’s awareness of their bodily sensations—or what is known as interoception—influences the intensity of their emotional experiences. Our findings reveal that even purportedly "non-emotional" feelings such as hunger or immune system reactivity to pathogens alter a person’s on-going emotional experiences. Our on-going research supported by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health examines how individual differences in interoception and the brain’s representation of the body contribute to emotion. We are interested in how these relationships change across the early and late parts of the lifespan, and how they contribute to health and well-being.
Developmental VARIATION
Our research is guided by the hypothesis that the mental, biological, and social processes that contribute to emotions are not static across the lifespan. For instance, our research has shown that the neural network configurations that are associated with emotion differ in young versus older adults. Our on-going research supported by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health examines how developmental variation in the neurophysiology supporting emotions and in the social contexts humans inhabit both contribute to lifespan variation in emotions. Collectively, our research examines variation in emotional processes from preschool to late adulthood.
EMOTIONS ARE SITUATED IN CULTURE
Our research is also guided by evidence that the neurobiology of emotion unfolds within and is shaped by human social contexts and culture. Our work has shown that accessibility to the emotion concepts most prominent in your culture influences how emotions are experienced, perceived in others’ faces, and represented by the brain. Our on-going research supported by the National Science Foundation examines how a person’s cultural origin and beliefs about their culture’s norms influences the neural basis of emotion. Our on-going research supported by the National Institute of Health examines how a person’s ethnic and racial identity and socioeconomic status influences emotions. Our newest work is using “big data” approaches from computational linguistics to examine how emotion categories are represented across languages and how that representation has changed across human history.