Dr. Kathrin Gschwendtner
Full member: July 2009 - June 2012
Dissertation Title: Perceptional processing of emotional stimuli and its genetic modulation.
Abstract: In daily life people are permanently confronted with all different kinds of stimuli. There are various factors – the nature of the stimuli itself as well as interindividual and situational factors- influencing if and how we process these stimuli. Various research results show that visual stimuli with an emotional content capture our attention more strongly (Dong, Yang, & Shen, 2009; Gotlib, Krasnoperova, Yue, & Joormann, 2004; Kissler & Keil, 2008) and that the emotional content leads to a longer processing of the stimuli (Nummenmaa, Hyona, & Calvo, 2006). Posner (1980) labeled these processes as engagement and disengagement of attention. Furthermore there are mood dependent effects seen in healthy individuals and psychiatric patients which indicate that there is a higher engagement (Gotlib, et al., 2004; Wadlinger & Isaacowitz, 2008) and deficient disengagement to mood congruent stimuli (Joormann, 2004). As already mentioned interindividual factors can have an influence as well. A very new area of research in interindividual differences is the area of the genetic modulation. A recently published eeg study (Herrmann, et al., 2009) revealed that the COMT-genotype varies the attentional processes concerning negative pictures. It remains unclear how the attentional processes concerning the negative pictures differ within the three variants of the COMT-polymorphism and it might be that the engagement and disengagement to the negative stimuli are altered. The aim of my dissertation project is to investigate the interaction between genetics, mood variables and visual affective stimuli regarding engagement and disengagement processes using reaction time measurements, eyetracking and eeg.
Principal Investigator:
Current position:
Klinik für Allgemeine Innere Medizin und Psychosomatik, Zentrum für Psychosoziale Medizin, Uni Heidelberg
