Dr Elise Kalokerinos and Dr Trevor Steward

"Mapping Everyday Emotion Using Large-Scale Experience Sampling Data" by Dr Elise Kalokerinos

Abstract: Emotions colour our most important moments—pride at a hard-fought win, anger at an injustice, or gratitude towards a friend—and our more routine daily events—irritation at a colleague’s loud talking, boredom during a long meeting, or amusement at a favourite TV show. Emotions are central to our everyday lives, and experience-sampling methods (ESM), are ideally placed to capture this richness. ESM involve following participants in real time across many measurement occasions, aiming to capture life as it is lived. In this talk, I will present research using ESM to investigate the skills that underlie effective emotional functioning in everyday life. I will then introduce the EMOTE database (emotedatabase.com), an open and searchable repository of ESM data, containing data from more than ~2,700 people sampled at ~220,000 measurement occasions.

"Harnessing 7-Telsa MRI to map subcortical mechanisms underlying cognitive restructuring" by Dr Trevor Steward

Abstract: Negative self-beliefs are a core feature of psychopathology. Despite this, we have a limited understanding of the brain mechanisms by which negative self-beliefs are cognitively restructured. Using a novel paradigm, we had participants engage in Socratic questioning techniques to restructure negative beliefs during ultra-high-field 7-Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging (UHF 7-T fMRI) scanning. UHF 7-TMRI scanning offers the researchers the possibility to examine small subcortical regions that are not easily scanned with 3-Tesla fMRI scanners. Notably, we found, for the first time in humans, that activity in the habenula – small midbrain nuclei involved in encoding negative value and regulating food intake – was modulated by cognitive restructuring and repetitive negative thinking. Dynamic causal modelling (DCM) revealed positive modulation of pathways from the habenula to the vPCC, hippocampus, and pOFC during the challenging of negative beliefs. These effects were confirmed in a separate independent sample. Our findings demonstrate novel contributions by the habenula to higher-order cognition.

About Dr Elise Kalokerinos

Dr Elise Kalokerinos is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne, where she co-directs the Functions of Emotions in Everyday Life (FEEL) Lab. Her research centres on emotion, motivation, and self-regulation in everyday life. She completed her PhD in social psychology at the University of Queensland, a Marie Curie fellowship at the Research Group of Quantitative Psychology and Individual Differences at KU Leuven in Belgium, and an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award fellowship at the University of Melbourne.

About Dr Trevor Steward

Dr Trevor Steward is a NHRMC/MRFF Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences and the Director of the MSPS Brain and Mental Health Hub. His research focuses on using ultra high-field 7-Telsa MRI technology to understand how subcortical regions of the brain contribute to common symptoms found across psychiatric disorders. Although the majority of his research to date has examined the neuropsychopathology of eating disorders, he also conducted studies on mood disorders, PTSD, and obesity. His aim is to leverage neuroimaging tools to inform brain-based treatments and to improve clinical outcomes. He is the co-author of over 100 publications, including in leading journals such as Molecular Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine.

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