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Project

The role of goal-directed processes in the causation of emotional behavior studied with TMS/MEP

The project seeks to investigate the processes causing emotional behavior such as approach, avoidance, and aggression. A better understanding of these processes may give us handles for remediating those emotional behaviors that are maladaptive for the individual or for society. Traditional models are dual process models with a default-interventionist architecture, in which a stimulus-driven process determines the early action tendency and the goal-directed process receives a secondary, regulatory role. We propose an alternative dual process model with a parallel-competitive architecture, in which both processes operate in parallel but the goal-directed process wins the competition and gets to determine the initial action tendency. The aim is to pit both models against each other in empirical research. To this end, we create situations in which we expect stimulus-driven and goal-directed processes to produce different action tendencies and we measure the early action tendency that occurs via Motor Evoked Potentials (MEPs) after early Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS).
Date:1 Oct 2017 →  30 Sep 2021
Keywords:emotional behavior
Disciplines:Applied psychology