Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Emotional stimuli capture our attention, making us more likely to look at those emotional items than at other, non-emotional stimuli in our environment. This advantage is also seen at the neural level-areas of the brain related to attention are more active when we look at emotional than at neutral stimuli. However, our emotional responses do not end there. Most of our emotional behaviours involve movements as well. For example, when we feel fear, our muscles tense up so that we are ready to respond to potential dangers. Several brain-imaging studies have shown that as we experience emotions, brain activity in areas related to planning movements also increases. These findings suggest that emotions prepare us for action.     Recent research performed by Dr. Stephen Smith's Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Winnipeg has shown that emotions also influence activity in the spinal cord. Dr. Smith and his students have found that looking at emotional images leads to an increase in activity in areas of the spinal cord related to movement. This result suggests that the brain and spinal cord work together to help people plan out which movements will be necessary when they need to respond to emotional stimuli in the environment. The next step in this research is to examine how these responses are affected by different cognitive processes. In the research proposed in this Discovery Grant, activity in the brain and spinal cord will be measured while people view different types of emotional stimuli. In one study, the researchers will examine whether this activity changes if people are paying attention to their body's responses to the emotional images. The second study will focus on whether neural activity changes if people are empathizing with the individuals in emotional videos (i.e., experiencing other people's emotions). A third study will examine how the brain and spinal cord respond when people try to control their emotional responses. Finally, the researchers will look at whether activity in the brain and spinal cord can explain individual differences in people's sensitivity to emotional stimuli. Taken together, the information gathered during these experiments will give researchers new information about the areas of our nervous system that are involved with many emotional and social experiences.