Emotion & Decision Making
Would you take the risky bet after good news, or after bad? Every choice carries a feeling, and every feeling quietly tilts a choice. This research area studies that two-way traffic between emotion and decision-making.
Think of the supermarket at the end of a stressful day, when the same chocolate bar suddenly looks far more tempting. We ask how regulating an emotion — turning the stress down — reshapes the value the brain places on options, from what we eat to the risks we take, and how the valuation circuitry across prefrontal cortex and striatum registers that shift.
The questions that guide us are everyday ones with real stakes: when do our feelings help us decide well, and when do they lead us astray — and can regulating emotion put better choices back within reach?
Funded by
Projects
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The neural underpinnings of the interaction between the cognitive control of emotions and value-based decision-making (MO2041/2-1), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), 2016-2018 (completed)
Team
Carmen Morawetz (PI)
Key publications
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Morawetz, C., Steyrl, D., Berboth, S., Heekeren, H.R., Bode, S. (2020). Emotion regulation modulates dietary decision-making via activity in the prefrontal-striatal valuation system. Cerebral Cortex, Jun 22:bhaa147. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhaa147.
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Morawetz, C., Mohr, P.N.C., Heekeren, H.R., Bode, S. (2019). The effect of emotion regulation on risk-taking and decision-related activity in prefrontal cortex. SCAN, doi: 10.1093/scan/nsz078.