Manon Mulckhuyse

At the Emotion, Attention & Perception Lab, we investigate how emotion shapes the way we select and process information from the visual world.

Research

We are interested in how emotionally significant information competes for attention, how goals and previous experiences influence what we see, and how these processes shape where we look and how we respond.

Our work connects fundamental questions about visual attention and perception to real-world contexts including threat, social anxiety, and the perception of art.

Team

Principal Investigator

Manon is an Assistant Professor in Cognitive Psychology at Leiden University. Her research focuses on how emotion shapes what we attend to and how we perceive. She is particularly interested in why emotionally significant events—such as signals of threat—bias our attention, influence where we look, and shape how we process visual information. To investigate these questions, she combines behavioral experiments with eye tracking, psychophysiology, EEG, and fMRI.

PhD Candidate

Junjie Huang

Junjie is a PhD candidate funded by CSC scholarship. In his project, he investigates the role of threat (or punishment) on attentional selection within the framework of selection history. He examines the underlying mechanisms of statistical learning (SL) and how SL can be used to eliminate or mitigate the negative effect of threat on visual search when it acts as an irrelevant distractor. To conduct his research, he uses behavioral, eye-tracking, fear-conditioning and EEG (electroencephalography) techniques.

PhD Candidate

Lukas Kunz

Lukas is a PhD candidate co-supervised with Sebo Uithol. In his project, he investigates how emotions, goals, prior experiences and expectations dynamically shape our visual perception. He focusses on top-down and bottom-up modulation of early visual processing (V1) by using 3T fMRI and laminar scanning in 7T fMRI.

PhD Candidate

Rajat Ravi Rao

Rajat is a PhD candidate co-supervised with Michiel van Elk and Francesco Walker. In his project, he investigates the influence of emotions on the perception and appreciation of visual art through the lens of a predictive processing framework. He aims to apply these findings to enhance art education methodologies. To conduct his research, he uses behavioral, eye-tracking and computational techniques to capture why and when we appreciate art.

PhD Candidate

Wenbin Pan

Wenbin is a PhD candidate co-supervised with Evin Aktar. In his project, he investigates attentional bias to threat in subclinical socially anxious individuals and intergenerational concordance between socially anxious adults and their offspring. To conduct his research, he uses behavioral, eye-tracking and virtual reality (VR).

Master students