The group's research focuses on cognitive en affective neuroscience of
intersensory perception, between different sensory systems, primarily
on the interaction between seeing and hearing and on how emotion and cognition
interact in humans. Behavioural and neurofunctional approaches (ERPs,
fMRI, MEG and TMS) are used in an integrated fashion.
Rare neuropsychological disorders (e.g. prosopagnosia) and more commonly-occurring
neurological disorders (e.g. autism, unilateral neglect, Huntington’s
disease and schizophrenia) are investigated and compared with patterns
observed in normal and ineurologically intact cognition.
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Multisensory
perception and the interaction between auditory and visual processes.
Cross-modal integration in speech perception, audio-visual
localisation and the perception of affect are all investigated. The
latter research concerns the interaction between identification of
the emotional expression portrayed in the face simultaneously with
the tone of voice in which sentences are spoken. |
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Face
recognition and its deficits.
de Gelder and her research team have carried out a wide variety
of studies in this area. The most important finding to date has been
that prosopagnosics’ face identification performance was improved
by inversion of face stimuli (the opposite is true for normal subjects).
The theoretical implications of this paradoxical “inversion
superiority” phenomenon in these patients have been incorporated
into a new theory of face processing. |
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Non-conscious
recognition in patients with cortical damage.
de Gelder has carried out novel research on the ability of
patients with striate cortex lesions to identify the emotional meaning
of visual stimuli of which they are not aware. Such non-conscious
recognition was hitherto not deemed possible in these patients. Her
group has also recently developed a new, indirect methodology for
studying non-conscious recognition of facial expressions (see PNAS,
2002; 2003; 2005). |
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Emotional
expression in whole bodies
The computer crashes. What do we do? Self-consciously scratch
our heads, fruitlessly fiddle with the computer, tear our hair and
nervously bite our lips. Even though we don't utter a single word,
anybody watching would know exactly what's going on inside. Our
body language is part of us. Because emotions, gestures and facial
expressions are linked up in the brain, even people who were born
deaf and blind will turn down the corners of their mouths to express
sadness and smile to show that they are happy.
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