I’m a PhD student at the Donders Institute for Cognitive Neuroimaging under supervision of Karin Roelofs and Erno Hermans. My project investigates the effect of freezing on visual perception. Revealing fundamental mechanisms underlying the effect of fear and freezing on visual perception may help to understand behavioral choices in high-risk stressful situations (e.g. remain frozen or switch to fight-or-flight mode) which to a large extend depends on what one sees. In my work, I specifically focus on the effect of freezing on perception of coarse (low spatial frequency) and detailed (high-spatial frequency) visual input, which I examine by employing a combination of psychophysical, physiological (heart rate, skin conductance, pupil dilation) and neural (fMRI) techniques.
Publications
Lojowska, M., Gladwin, T. E., Hermans, E. J., & Roelofs, K. (2015). Freezing promotes perception of coarse visual features. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(6), 1080. pdf.
Lojowska, M., Ling, S., Hermans, E.J., Roelofs, K. Freezing modulates visuocortical activity in humans (submitted)
Lojowska, M., Mulckhuyse, M., Hermans, E.J., Roelofs, K. Fear enhances detection of coarse visual information in the absence of visual awareness (in prep)
Lojowska, M., Ling, S., Hermans, E.J., Roelofs, K. Does pupil dilation contribute to the impaired perception of visual details under threat? (in prep)