ERPinator Lab: Laboratory for Research on Cognition, Emotion and Action

Our research is to identify the neural mechanisms that underlie cognitive processes, emotional states and flexible behavior.

Specifically, we are interested in how humans adapt their ongoing behavior in accordance with environmental demands and how the brain reacts to arousing, unexpected or evaluative stimuli.

We examine the dynamic interplay between mental operations and brain processes that enable effective:

• monitoring of external events,
• control of interferences in information processing,
• response inhibition,
• detection and evaluation of errors,
• processing of rewards and punishments,
• decision making.

In addition, we investigate whether and how the efficiency of these processes is associated with specific individual characteristics, i.a., impulsivity (in healthy and clinical populations, e.g., ADHD children), indecisiveness, personal beliefs, or anxiety-related traits.

We also explore the interaction effects between emotion and cognitive control. We are especially interested in how response inhibition, error detection and action monitoring are modulated by emotional and motivational factors.

We use a variety of methods and analytic approaches to study these questions, including (but not limited to):

• electroencephalography (EEG),
• analysis of event related potentials (ERPs),
• EEG source localization techniques,
• electromyography,
• linear mixed models,
• machine learning algorithms.

Principal Investigator: Dr. Hab. Magdalena Senderecka, Prof. JU