Contact Information
267-519-4688
Janina Seubert
Postdoctoral Fellow
Education
Ph.D., Cognitive Neuroscience/Psychiatry; RWTH Aachen University
Research Summary
My research explores the integration of different stimulus features in the human brain.
In particular, I am interested in understanding how different neural systems influence each other when people evaluate the pleasantness of an object. We know that we like to eat a banana more when it actually smells like one, but how exactly do basic sensory processes and cognitive processes interact to form a unified perception of a multisensory object?
And how does our emotional experience of the outside world change when the balance between these integration processes is disturbed, for example in psychiatric illness?
To study these questions, I use behavioral testing and functional magnetic resonance imaging in healthy populations and patients with schizophrenia. Here at Monell, I will also begin to use Electroencephalography to investigate the timing of different brain processes related to multisensory integration through event-related potentials (ERP).
Ultimately, I hope that increasing our understanding of the processes underlying feature integration in emotional processing will help to develop targeted therapeutic approaches for disorders where these mechanisms are disturbed, helping to enhance emotional experience and expression.
Keywords
Olfaction, fMRI, Multisensory Integration, Emotion, Schizophrenia
Recent Publications
Seubert J, Kellermann T, Loughead J, Boers F, Brensinger C, Schneider F, Habel U. (2010) Processing of disgusted faces is facilitated by odor primes: a functional MRI study. Neuroimage, 53(2):746-56.
Seubert J, Loughead J, Kellermann T, Boers F, Brensinger CM, Habel U. (2010) Multisensory integration of emotionally valenced olfactory-visual information in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls. J Psychiatry Neurosci, 35(3):185-94.
Seubert J, Rea AF, Loughead J, Habel U (2009) Mood induction with olfactory stimuli reveals differential affective responses in males and females. Chem Senses, 34(1):77-84.
