On April 24, 2026, the Long Night of Research once again lit up Austria, and the Affective Neuro Lab was thrilled to take part at the Department of Psychology's home at the Grauer Bär in Innsbruck. This year's theme, 🏡 "The House of Life" invited visitors on an intimate walk-through: room by room, each corner of the house revealed a different facet of the mind. Researchers from across the entire Department of Psychology presented their work that evening — here are the highlights from our own lab.

🌟 Highlights of the Evening

- 🛏️ The Bedroom: Mi Lande, together with Christina Grammenou and Aaron Tolone, welcomed visitors into a cozy, dimly lit corner dedicated to sleep. Mi shared insights from her research on sleep paralysis, while visitors could test their knowledge in a sleep quiz or craft their own lavender sachets to take home. Aaron introduced Betwixt, rounding out an evening full of restful curiosity.

- 🍳 Kitchen of Emotions: Nils Wehner and Gaia Lapomarda turned up the heat with the Marshmallow Challenge. In pairs, visitors had three minutes to build the tallest spaghetti-and-marshmallow tower they could — first without any guidance, then again after being handed one of six evidence-based emotion-regulation strategies to try out. The closing discussion drove home a simple truth: no single strategy works every time. The bigger your emotional toolbox, the better your chances — one marshmallow tower at a time.

- 📚 The Library: Sofia Amaoui, Ludwig, and Laura Gervais used this quiet room to spotlight persistent research gaps around women in science. Visitors learned how little neuroscience research specifically addresses women and female hormones, and could jot down which women's health topics they felt deserved more attention. A second corner turned to brain and mood changes linked to stopping the contraceptive pill, where visitors pinned up their own experiences — positive and negative. A third part addressed intimate partner violence and sexism across Europe. Visitors shared their own experiences and questions throughout, and the room rarely emptied out all evening.

- 🌿 The Winter Garden: Anna Gmeiner and Jonathan Weber filled this room to overflowing with plants, natural materials, and an immersive ambiance designed to engage every sense. Their research explored how nature affects body and mind — including emotions like awe — and its positive as well as negative effects on well-being. Visitors swapped stories of their own encounters with nature, and, at times, with its loss, sparking fresh ideas on how to protect and enjoy the natural world more thoughtfully.

- 🔬 The Cellar: Down in the basement, Carmen Morawetz gave visitors a hands-on look into our MRI environment — a rare chance to see and feel what a real neuroimaging session is like.

- 🗝️ The Golden Room: Visitors entering the "house" received a small passport, ready to be stamped in every room they explored — ours and many more besides, since researchers from across the Department of Psychology took part in the "house" that evening. Anyone who collected a stamp from each station unlocked a password to this secret final stop, where the evening's scattered insights — on sleep, emotion regulation, research gaps concerning women, our connection to nature, the inner workings of the brain, and more — came together into one guiding message: small, well-informed choices, made room by room, add up to a healthier and happier life.

🎉 Event Success

Across Tirol, the Long Night of Research once again drew large crowds — roughly 15,000 visitors explored around 500 stations throughout Innsbruck, Kufstein, and Osttirol this year. At the Grauer Bär, "The House of Life" welcomed a steady stream of curious visitors throughout the evening, with some rooms drawing especially lively crowds, and more than a few visitors admitted they wandered from door to door simply to find out what was waiting in the next room.

It was, once again, a joy to open our doors — literally, this year — to the public. We're already looking forward to welcoming everyone back for the next Long Night of Research!