Specialist Research Laboratory

Affective Neuroscience Laboratory

In the Affective Neuroscience Laboratory we are interested in understanding the biological bases of emotional and social processes in humans. In particular we are interested in the way  in which mood states, and especially mood disorders such as depression, impact  on the way the brain attends to, processes, and responds to emotional and  social information. In order to investigate these issues we do research with both clinical (e.g., people suffering from depressive and anxiety disorders)  and non-clinical populations.

Experimental approaches employed in the laboratory include:

• Startle reflex modulation
• Event related brain potentials (ERPs)
• Measures of autonomic cardiac control (e.g., Heart period, Pre-ejection period, Respiratory sinus arrhythmia)
• Facial muscle activity (both facial EMG and FACS coding)
• Skin conductance
• Pharmacological and dietary manipulation of neurotransmitter levels
• Emotional and attentional processing of affective pictures (including studies of subliminally presented stimuli)
• Cognitive/affective decision making and reasoning tasks (e.g., the Wason Selection Task, Iowa Gambling Task)
• Mood manipulation using music and imagery
• Studies of individuals at risk for psychopathology (e.g., bipolar and unipolar depression, psychosis)
• Studies of clinically depressed and anxious individuals

Current Areas of Research

• Emotional and attentional processing of affective stimuli in clinical depression and anxiety
• Somatic and neural correlates of sensitivity to short-term and long-term affective outcomes
• The influence of serotonin on responses to emotional and social stimuli
• The effect of induced mood states on emotional processing and emotional responses
• Processing and response to facial expressions in those at risk for severe psychopathology
• Affective and attentional processing of social encounters
• Affective and neural bases of social reasoning

Research Staff:

• Associate Professor Nick Allen
• Professor John Trinder
• Professor Fiona Judd
• Associate Professor Trevor Norman, Department of Psychiatry

Visiting Associate:

Dr. Edwin W. Cook III, Department of Psychology, The University of Alabama at Birmingham


Research assistant:

Julian Simm

Lab Facilities:

The laboratory is well equipped, with three testing rooms (one located at the Royal Melbourne Hospital),  a  large number of networked PC computers, and equipment for presenting  complex  multimedia stimuli to participants. We also have three racks of Grass amplifiers that can record a wide range of physiological measurements such as EEG, EMG, SCR and ECG, and an ambulatory system for measuring ECG and impedance cardiography.

Funding & Grants Information:

Research conducted in the laboratory is funded through grants from the Australian Research Council (ARC).