Professor Sarah Garfinkel

Research

How can deficits in bodily processing contribute to alternations in emotion processing? Current research by Sarah includes individual differences in interoception, focusing on detection of the heart. She demonstrates that there are dissociable dimensions of interoception, with people’s belief in their ability (interoceptive sensibility) dissociable from their actual ability (interoceptive accuracy) and their metacognitive insight (interoceptive awareness). To further understand links between the body and emotion, she demonstrates deficits in interoceptive accuracy in individuals with Autism, in the context of elevated interoceptive sensibility in this population. Moreover, the discrepancy between these interoceptive dimensions predicts anxiety. This work has implications for bodily awareness training as a therapeutic strategy in people with Autism Spectrum Conditions to potentially aid emotion processing and decrease anxiety. On-going work is also exploring the neural correlations of disrupted interoceptive dimensions in Schizophrenia using fMRI.

Sarah uses autonomic monitoring in combination with functional neuroimaging to investigate brain-body interactions. For example, in a recent study, the mechanisms through which anger can impede decision making was investigated using beat-to-beat blood pressure monitoring. Both subliminal anger cues and elevated blood pressure reduced neural activation in visual and attention areas, such as the cuneus (A) and parietal cortex (B), and this reduction in activation predicted impaired reaction time during decision making.

As part of the ERC grant awarded to Professor Hugo Critchley, Sarah is investigating how cardiac timing can alter the processing of fear, with implications for understanding mechanisms underlying Anxiety. Together with Hugo Critchley, Dora Duka, and Georgina Heron (PhD student), Sarah is pursuing how individual differences in interoception can underlie craving and maladaptive decision making. Other ongoing projects with Dora include the effect of alcohol on interoception. In collaboration with Marco Bozzali, Elena Makovac and Hugo Critchley, Sarah is using carotid stimulation in conjunction with fMRI to investigate the impact of baroreceptors on brain and resultant effects on emotion processing, noticeably fear.