Interaction Emotion - Cognition

The central research question of my doctoral thesis and reason for sleepless nights is how cognitive processes and emotional distractions interact with each other. How are these processes entangled? Which control mechanisms are triggered? Does the valence of the emotional distraction play a fundamental role? And is there a further interaction with the level of task difficulty or workload level? Which neuronal activation patterns underly these processes? I accept the major challenge of this research question and its complexity and act as Sherlock Holmes…First insights from an EEG Pilot Study!

In one of my PhD projects, I am investigating neuronal activation patterns during simulated driving with Magnetencephalography. I am interested in understanding and decoding cognitive processes during driving with different task difficulties (easy highway road and visually and attentionally more challenging construction work) and concurrent auditory emotional distraction of different valence (negative, neutral, and positive).