The Cognition Emotion Interaction (CEI) Lab
Hadas Okon-Singer

Essential hypertension is the most important risk factor for cerebrovascular diseases, which are a major cause of death in industrialized societies. In several projects, we develop continuous measurement and analysis of blood pressure reactions to emotional stimuli among individuals at high risk of developing hypertension. We also examine whether deficient attentional mechanisms and neural abnormalities in prefrontal-limbic pathways are related to magnified blood pressure rea

The research focuses on visual statistical learning of emotional information, that is, how humans learn to perceive statistical regularities of emotional stimuli in their environment. Current studies examine how negative valence influences the learning of temporal patterns, how statistical learning modulates attentional biases toward threatening stimuli, and age differences in the statistical learning of emotional stimuli.

Anxiety and depression are distinct – albeit overlapping – psychiatric diseases, currently diagnosed by self-reported-symptoms. This research presents a new diagnostic tool, which rigorously tests for differences in cognitive biases among anxious and depressed individuals. A comprehensive behavioral test battery quantifies various cognitive biases. Advanced machine-learning tools, developed for this study, analyzed these results. These tools detect unique patterns that charac