The Interoception Lab

Our body has natural rhythms: heartbeats every second or so and the cycle of automatic respiration repeats every 4 seconds or so. In the interception lab, we study how these physiological fluctuations of the body are represented in the brain and what impacts these have on one's perception of the external world. We investigate this question using multiple methodologies including intracranial recordings from humans, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), behavioral tasks, and computational modelling.

Our lab is also interested in a disorder of emotion processing called Misophonia, characterized by strong negative emotional responses triggered by ordinary day-to-day sounds such as the sound of other people eating breathing or chewing. Specifically, our focus is on the brain mechanisms of misophonia and the role of social/emotional factors in driving the aberrant brain activity and distress in misophonia. We use fMRI, EEG, and behavioral measures to look into this question.