New York University
Center for Neural Science and Psychology Department

Ph.D. in Psychology and Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland, 2008

M.Sc. in Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology, University of Canterbury, U.K., 2005

Diploma in Psychology, University of Trier, Germany, 2005

Email: tobias.brosch (add nyu.edu)

Research
I investigate the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying emotional appraisal processes. More specifically, I am interested in understanding how the brain implements the evaluation and prioritization of emotional information that is relevant for the needs, goals and values of the organism. I am pursuing several interrelated lines of research, concerning (a) the rapid selection and prioritization of emotionally relevant information by the attention system, (b) the impact of goals and values on evaluative processing and decision-making, and (c) the interplay of automatic and controlled processes during attribution and evaluation. My research integrates concepts and theories from emotion and social psychology with the methodological toolkit of cognitive neuroscience (behavioral measures such as response times and decisions, neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI and EEG, and neuropsychological lesion studies) to investigate how emotions help us understand and navigate our complex environment.

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Brosch, T., Coppin, G., Schwartz, S., & Sander, D. (in press). The importance of actions and the worth of an object: Dissociable neural systems representing core value and economic value. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

Brosch, T., Coppin, G., Scherer, K.R., Schwartz, S., & Sander, D. (2011). Generating value(s): Psychological value hierarchies reflect context-dependent sensitivity of the reward system. Social Neuroscience, 6, 198-208.

Brosch, T., Pourtois, G., Sander, D., & Vuilleumier, P. (2011). Additive effects of emotional, endogenous, and exogenous attention: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence. Neuropsychologia, 49, 1779-87.

Brosch, T., Pourtois, G., & Sander, D. (2010). The perception and categorization of emotional stimuli: A review. Cognition and Emotion, 24, 377-400.

Brosch, T., Grandjean, D., Sander, D., & Scherer, K.R. (2009). Cross-modal emotional attention: Emotional voices modulate early stages of visual processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21, 1670-1679.

Scherer, K.R., & Brosch, T. (2009). Culture-specific appraisal biases contribute to emotion dispositions. European Journal of Personality, 23, 265-288.

Brosch, T., Sander, D., Pourtois, G., & Scherer, K.R. (2008). Beyond fear: Rapid spatial orienting toward positive emotional stimuli. Psychological Science, 19, 392-370.

Brosch, T., Grandjean, D., Sander, D., & Scherer, K.R. (2008). Behold the voice of wrath: Cross-modal modulation of visual attention by anger prosody. Cognition, 106, 1497-1503.

Brosch, T., Sander, D., & Scherer, K.R. (2007). That baby caught my eye...Attention capture by infant faces. Emotion, 7, 685-689.

Brosch, T., & Sharma, D. (2005). The role of fear-relevant stimuli in visual search: A comparison of phylogenetic and ontogenetic stimuli. Emotion, 5, 360-364.

Helmstaedter, C., Brosch, T., Kurthen, M., & Elger, C.E. (2004). The impact of sex and language dominance on material-specific memory before and after left temporal lobe surgery. Brain, 127,1518-1525.

Book

Brosch, T. (2008). Emotionelle Aufmerksamkeit [Emotional attention]. Saarbrücken: VDM.

Book Chapters

Kreibig, S., Schaefer, G., & Brosch, T. (2010). Psychophysiological response patterning in emotion: Implications for affective computing. In K.R. Scherer, T. Bänziger & E. Roesch (Eds.), Blueprint for affective computing: A sourcebook (pp. 105-130). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Vuilleumier, P., & Brosch, T. (2009). Interactions of emotion and attention in perception. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences IV (pp. 925-934). Cambridge: MIT Press.

Brosch, T., & Scherer, K.R. (2009). Komponenten-Prozess-Modell – ein integratives Emotionsmodell [Component process model of emotion – an integrative model of emotion]. In V. Brandstätter & J.H. Otto (Eds.), Handbuch der Allgemeinen Psychologie: Motivation und Emotion (pp. 446-456). Göttingen: Hogrefe.

Brosch, T., & Scherer, K.R. (2008). Plädoyer für das Komponenten-Prozess-Modell als theoretische Grundlage der experimentellen Emotionsforschung [A case for the component process model as theoretical starting point for experimental emotion research]. In: W. Janke, G. Debus, & M. Schmidt-Daffy (Eds.), Experimentelle Emotionspsychologie: Methodische Ansätze, Probleme und Ergebnisse (pp. 193-204). Lengerich: Pabst.

Conference Contributions

Brosch, T., Pourtois, G., Sander, D., & Vuilleumier, P. (2011, January). Additive effects of emotional, endogenous, and exogenous attention: Behavioral and electro-physiological evidence. Paper presented at the Expert Meeting on Emotional Attention: Bottom-up and Top-down influence of emotion on attention, Ghent, Belgium, January 27-28, 2011.

Brosch, T., Coppin, G., Scherer, K.R., Schwartz, S., & Sander, D. (2010, October). Generating Value(s): Psychological value hierarchies reflect context-dependent sensitivity of the reward system. Paper presented at the 4th Annual Meeting of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society, Chicago, USA, October 29-31, 2010.

Brosch, T., Coppin, G., Scherer, K.R., Schwartz, S., & Sander, D. (2010, May). Psychological value hierarchies reflect context-dependent sensitivity of the reward system. Paper presented at the 22nd Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science, Boston, USA, May 27-30, 2010.

Brosch, T., Coppin, G., Scherer, K.R., Schwartz, S., & Sander, D. (2010, April). The warm glow of selfishness: High self-interest value is associated with increased striatal activation to reward. Poster presented at the 17th Annual Cognitive Neuroscience Meeting, Montreal, Canada, April 17-20, 2010.

Brosch, T. (2009, August). What catches your eye? An appraisal theory perspective on the mechanisms of emotional attention. Paper presented at the 11th Congress of the Swiss Psychological Society, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, August 19-20, 2009.

Brosch, T., Pourtois, G., Sander, D., Scherer, K.R., & Vuilleumier, P. (2009, August). Additive effects and interactions of emotional, endogenous, and exogenous attention mechanisms. Poster presented at the 2009 ISRE (International Society for Research on Emotion) Conference, Leuven, Belgium, August 6-8, 2009.

Brosch, T. (2008, July). Appraisal mechanisms and rapid attention deployment. Paper presented at the 29th International Congress of Psychology, Berlin, Germany, July 20-25, 2008.

Brosch, T., Grandjean, D., Sander, D., & Scherer, K.R. (2008, April). Behold the voice of wrath: Emotional prosody modulates early visual processing. Poster presented at the 15th Annual Cognitive Neuroscience Meeting, San Francisco, United States, April 12-15, 2008.

Brosch, T., Sander, D., & Scherer, K.R. (2007, September). That baby caught my eye…. Attention modulation by biologically relevant stimuli. Paper presented at the 10th Congress of the Swiss Society of Psychology, Zurich, Switzerland, September 13-14, 2007.

Brosch, T., & Sander, D. (2007, July). Appraisal mechanisms and attention. Paper presented at the 15th Annual Meeting of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Geneva, Switzerland, July 9-12, 2007.

Brosch, T., Sander, D., & Scherer, K.R. (2006, June). Looking for my baby. Attentional bias towards baby schemata in a dot probe task. Paper presented at the Consortium of European Research on Emotion (CERE), Bertinoro Emotions Workshop, Bertinoro, Italy, June 8-11, 2006.

Brosch, T., Naumann, E., Hagemann, D., Seifert, J., & Bartussek, D. (2005) Searching for evolutionary threat: An ERP study [poster abstract]. Journal of Psychophysiology 19(2), 110.