PhD Defence Jette Hanna de Vos

Keywords: Emotions, mental health, neuroimaging 
 

"Body, brain and emotions: The interplay between peripheral- and central neural processes in the subjective experience of emotions"

Despite years of research on the fundamental mechanisms of emotions, much is still unknown about how the different components of emotions are associated with each other, and how they influence the subjective experience of emotions. By employing a variety of experimental emotion induction methods, manipulations and measurements, the aim of this thesis was to further unravel the interplay between peripheral (‘the body’)- and central neural (‘the brain’) processes in the subjective experience of emotions. For example, this thesis investigated the effects of pharmacological manipulations (thus influencing one of the components of emotion) on the subjective experience of experimentally induced panic. The experiments and the results of this thesis advance our understanding of emotions, and pave the way for future research to advance our understanding of emotions even more. The better all of these associations are understood, the better we can understand when something goes wrong in these emotional processes, which is the case in many mental health conditions. 

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