Project description
How changes in cardiac activity impact our response to danger
The body and brain are interconnected, especially when facing a threat. For instance, a slowing heart rate affects our response to danger. Understanding this link is crucial for decision-making in stressful situations. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the HEART-BRAKE project will investigate how changes in cardiac activity influence perception under threat. The project will quantify the relationship between dynamic cardiac changes and neural activity, using alpha oscillations as a measure of cortical excitability, and determine their combined effects on perception during electrical shock threats. It will also explore causation by manipulating the afferent cardiac signal through transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation. The findings may inform new training protocols for high-risk professionals.
Objective
While the body and the brain have long been studied as separate domains, it is now known that bodily states can influence cognitive processes. Threatening situations vividly illustrate this link: imminent threats trigger a rapid slowing in heart rate, which influences how we detect, perceive and react to threats. Given the importance of perception and decision-making in threatening contexts for many domains of daily life, a comprehensive understanding of the body-brain dynamics under threat is imperative. The goal of HEART-BRAKE is to launch an investigation into the function of dynamic changes in cardiac activity for perception under threat. Combining my existing skills and expertise with ambitious training objectives in state-of-the-art neuroimaging and physiology under the supervision of Prof. Karin Roelofs, I will systematically address this goal under two specific objectives. The first objective is to quantify the relationship between dynamic changes in cardiac activity and concurrent neural activity (using alpha oscillations as an index of cortical excitability) and their joint impact on perception under threat of electrical shocks (WP1). The second objective is to assess causation between cardiac activity and perceptual effects by manipulating the strength of the afferent cardiac signal with transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS; WP2). As part of this project, I will learn new experimental techniques (joint magnetoencephalography and electrocardiography) and enhance skills in supervision, leadership and organisation essential for my career goal of establishing my own research group. The findings will contribute to a mechanistic account of how cardiac activity shapes perception, considerably expanding our understanding of body-brain integration. The outcomes may also inform novel training protocols for professionals operating in high-risk environment and offer new perspectives on fear-related pathologies linked to disrupted body-brain axis.
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- medical and health sciences basic medicine pathology
- medical and health sciences basic medicine physiology
- social sciences psychology cognitive psychology
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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6525 XZ Nijmegen
Netherlands
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