The Affect & Cognition Lab (ACL) is an interdisciplinary research group focusing on the psychological and neural foundations of emotion and cognition. We employ a variety of methodological approaches including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), peripheral psychophysiology, computational modeling, and rat models to investigate how the brain gives rise to complex mental events, such as emotions, attention, learning and memory. The principal investigators, Drs. Adam Anderson and Eve De Rosa, are faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto.

Our research explores the psychological and neural aspects of learning, employing a cross-species perspective (human and rodent models) on the attentional and neurochemical modulatory influences on information processing.

Our research investigates the neuromodulatory influences on attention and learning in rats. To examine the specific contributions of the neurochemical acetylcholine, we employ pharmacological and immunotoxic lesion techniques along with cross-species comparisons.

Our research employs behavioural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to investigate interactions between mechanisms of attention and learning.