Balancing emotions and behaviour - environmental factors, individual differences and the brain

Our emotions fluctuate as we go through our day, in response to what we encounter - for example, seeing someone cough might make us feel worried or stressed about getting ill. These emotions in turn can help us to act appropriately in the situation - for example we might try to avoid the person or wash our hands. In daily life it is also obvious that there are a lot of individual differences in how people respond to situations: what might make one person extremely worried, might not affect another. Similarly, while some people can regulate emotions by for example watching TV to relax after a stressful day, others might instead check the news, leading to a spiral of worry.

In short, my goals are to understand both the general relationships between emotions and actions, as well as differences between people in their emotional responses and abilities to regulate their emotions. To reveal the thought and brain processes underlying these abilities, I will develop new computer tasks, mathematical models, and use brain imaging. Finally, I will research whether mindfulness training can help improve how we use emotions to inform what we do.

To be able to measure how emotions affect how we set goals and prioritize different behaviours ('decide what to do'), I will design new kinds of video game-like laboratory tasks where people have to continuously balance different internal needs of their game character (e.g. hunger) and external constraints (e.g. danger from enemies). These tasks will be tailored to evoke different emotions - e.g. stress or contentment. I can then test how the specific emotions affect behaviour. Due to the nature of my tasks, I can also measure both potential 'spiralling out' (e.g. stress leading to actions producing more stress), as well as emotion regulation (e.g. stress leading to actions reducing stress).

Using mathematical models, I can obtain precise, quantitative and objective measures of the thought and emotional processes of each person. I will test how well these computational measures of behaviour in my video game tasks relate to individual differences in emotional dispositions and regulation strategies in real life. For this, large groups (>1,000) of participants will do the tasks via the internet. They will also complete standard questionnaires that measure emotional traits, such as anxiety or mood. I will then put cognitions and questionnaires in relationship with each other using my mathematical models.

To understand the biological underpinning of the relationships between emotions, thoughts and behaviour, I will combine my tasks and computational models with a neuroimaging method which can measure brain activity on a millisecond timescale (magnetoencephalography, MEG). This will allow me to test whether stress affects how slowly or quickly the brain changes between different states. Intuitively, corresponding to the subjective experience of jumping quickly from one thought to the next without being able to focus when one is stressed.

My final aim is to test how the interplay between emotions and behaviour can be improved. Mindfulness has been found to increase wellbeing and promote resilience and healthy ageing. However, little is known about its psychological and behavioural mechanisms. Based on the ratings of participants on psychological questionnaires, it seems plausible that this happens through increased awareness of one's behaviour, emotions and their interplay. Here I will test this hypothesis directly using my tasks and models.

While my fellowship is focused on basic scientific understanding, in the mid to long term my work will help identify new treatment targets. For this, I am working together with clinical researchers. We will use my computer tasks and models to understand the mechanisms underlying different mental health problems (depression, autism, substance abuse) and potential novel treatments (brain stimulation, medication).

I have four interrelated aims with the overall goal to understand the rich interplay between emotions and behaviour, neurally and cognitively, in healthy humans. First, I will study how situation-specific emotions are evoked by the environment and how they then shape how people prioritize different actions and goals. For this, I will develop new kinds of experimental tasks and cognitive models, in which people will be free to choose what to do when and for how long. Thus, emotions can affect behaviour in more rich and varied ways. I will also measure how people might use behaviour to regulate their emotions (e.g. avoiding stressors). I will also have rich emotional measures by combining intermittent self-reports with physiological measures (e.g. pupil size) to identify underlying dimensions (e.g. arousal).

My second aim is to use my tasks and models to capture individual differences in emotional, cognitive and behavioural processing. For this I will link my quantitative task-based computational measures to questionnaire-based self-reports of real-life emotional dispositions and regulation strategies.

My third aim is to understand the brain processes underlying interactions between emotions and behaviour. I will use magnetoencephalography (MEG) to image brain activity on a millisecond timescale. This will allow me to measure the impact of emotions and arousal on stability of brain networks over time (using Hidden Markov Models). I predict that high arousal emotions such as stress increase the speed with which neural networks flicker. I predict that this then affects decisions through changing the evidence accumulation processes in brain regions like the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.

My fourth aim is to test whether the interplay between emotions and behaviour can be causally changed in healthy humans through a mindfulness intervention. Mindfulness has been proposed to enhance wellbeing and reduce chronic stress and is thus relevant for healthy ageing.