CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EMOTION AND ATTENTION

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The broad aim of the Center is to study emotional stimulus processing in all its directly measurable manifestations, i.e., as affective report, behavior, and patterns of expressive physiology (facial, visceral, and neuromuscular), and to understand the relation of these processing measures to functional changes in the brain. An important further aim is to study the interaction of emotional reactivity with attentional demands-as attention is modulated by stimulus characteristics, motivational state, and behavioral and social context. Proposed research examines continuity and difference in affective responding over different channels of sensory input, instructions, symbolic or virtual representation, presentation medium, assessing individual differences as well as general response patterns. Findings are interpreted in the view that the brain is an organ for processing information and in consideration of developing knowledge of the brain s functional anatomy and neurophysiology. A theoretical model of emotion and motivation, based on neuroscience research with animals, guide analyses of human affect. Connecting links are sought through human electrocortical (EEG) and brain imaging (fMRI) studies. The center organization includes six primary research projects that range in content from research on the animal model of emotion, to studies of affective picture and language processing, and social/emotional factors in temperament and personality. The Center also includes an international group of affiliated investigators, and three Cores that serve the project: Research Administration and Training, Science Technology, and Media Cores. The Center provides broad services to field of emotion research, developing stimulus materials and advancing laboratory technology, training research apprentices, fostering scientific communication, generally facilitating emotion studies within this country and internationally. The Center investigators have a special concern with translational research-the moving of basic scientific knowledge on emotion into the mental health arena. Thus, there is a sub-focus on maladaptive emotional states, characterized by exaggerated intensity or persistence, as in the anxiety disorders, and on the converse condition, apparent deficit in emotional responding, as in psychopathy.