Elaine Fox

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Elaine Fox
Born1963
Dublin
Alma mater University College Dublin
Known forStudy of emotion
Scientific career
Institutions University College Dublin
Victoria University of Wellington
University of Oxford

Elaine Fox (born 1963) is a Professor of Psychology and Director of the Oxford Centre for Emotions and Affective Neuroscience (OCEAN) at the University of Oxford. Her research considers the science of emotion and what makes some people more resilient than others. As of 2019 Fox serves as the Mental Health Networks Impact and Engagement Coordinator for United Kingdom Research and Innovation.

Contents

Early life and education

Fox grew up in Dublin. She studied neuroscience and psychology at the University College Dublin and remained there as a research associate until 1988. She worked in Dublin's St. James's Hospital. In 1988, Fox was appointed as a lecturer at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. She returned to the University College Dublin in 1993, where she worked as a Senior Lecturer for one year. [1]

Research and career

Fox moved to work at the University of Essex, where she was made a Professor in 2000. In 2007, she was elected Head of the Department of Psychology and the Centre for Brain Science. [2] In 2013, Fox joined the University of Oxford. Here she directs the Oxford Centre for Emotions & Affective Neuroscience (OCEAN). She was awarded a European Research Council Advanced Investigator Award to study emotional vulnerability, resilience and optimism. In particular, she evaluates why people respond differently to adversity and success. [3] [4] She leads the Cog-BIAS project that looks at what makes particular people vulnerable to developing anxiety disorders. [5] [6] This involves evaluating at how biases in information processing (for example in attention, interpretation) impact emotions. [3] [7] She showed that using Attention Bias Modification (ABM) can be used to modify biased attention to develop emotional resilience. [8] The origins of this bias modification are in the variation of serotonin transporter polymorphism. [8] She found that people who worry more are less likely to be able to control their attention. [9] [10]

Fox identified that the people who inherit two copies of the long variant of the 5-HTTLPR gene avoid negative imagery. [11] She concluded that these people were ready to seek out positive events – an optimistic streak, whilst people with the short variant of the 5-HTTLPR gene are more prone to negative experiences and anxiety. [3] Her work was confirmed by Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, who identified that having two copies of the long variant of the 5-HTTLPR gene correlates with happiness in teenagers. [12]

In October 2019, Fox was appointed the United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) Mental Health Networks Impact and Engagement Coordinator. In this capacity she will facilitate engagement between the UKRI's mental health networks. [13] She has been personally been awarded £450,000 funding to support these activities. [13] The group will progress themes such as inequalities in accessing care, social isolation, student mental health and the value of local communities. [13]

Her research has received significant media coverage, including on ABC News and BBC Horizon, as well as in The New York Times and The Economist. [14] [15] As part of her public engagement around psychology, Fox taught Michael Mosley to be more optimistic. [16] [17] During the experiment, Fox scanned Mosley's brain, and attributed his pessimism to the activity in his right front cortex. [18] She has discussed the power of positivity and mental health with Claudia Hammond. [19]

Selected publications

Her publications include:

Related Research Articles

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Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotions are often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, or creativity.

Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both conscious and unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feelings, and motives. Psychology is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Biological psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Empathy</span> Capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing

Empathy is generally described as the ability to take on another's perspective, to understand, feel, and possibly share and respond to their experience. There are more definitions of empathy that include but are not limited to social, cognitive, and emotional processes primarily concerned with understanding others. Often times, empathy is considered to be a broad term, and broken down into more specific concepts and types that include cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, somatic empathy, and spiritual empathy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beck's cognitive triad</span> Three key elements of depression

Beck's cognitive triad, also known as the negative triad, is a cognitive-therapeutic view of the three key elements of a person's belief system present in depression. It was proposed by Aaron Beck in 1967. The triad forms part of his cognitive theory of depression and the concept is used as part of CBT, particularly in Beck's "Treatment of Negative Automatic Thoughts" (TNAT) approach.

Affective neuroscience is the study of how the brain processes emotions. This field combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality, emotion, and mood. The basis of emotions and what emotions are remains an issue of debate within the field of affective neuroscience.

This article is a general timeline of psychology.

Music psychology, or the psychology of music, may be regarded as a branch of both psychology and musicology. It aims to explain and understand musical behaviour and experience, including the processes through which music is perceived, created, responded to, and incorporated into everyday life. Modern music psychology is primarily empirical; its knowledge tends to advance on the basis of interpretations of data collected by systematic observation of and interaction with human participants. Music psychology is a field of research with practical relevance for many areas, including music performance, composition, education, criticism, and therapy, as well as investigations of human attitude, skill, performance, intelligence, creativity, and social behavior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Feldman Barrett</span> American psychological scientist and neuroscientist

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An emotional bias is a distortion in cognition and decision making due to emotional factors.

Neuroticism is a personality trait associated with negative emotions. It is one of the Big Five traits. Individuals with high scores on neuroticism are more likely than average to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, pessimism, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness. Such people are thought to respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations, such as minor frustrations, as appearing hopelessly difficult. Their behavioral responses may include procrastination, substance use, and other maladaptive behaviors, which may aid in relieving negative emotions and generating positive ones.

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5-HTTLPR is a degenerate repeat polymorphic region in SLC6A4, the gene that codes for the serotonin transporter. Since the polymorphism was identified in the middle of the 1990s, it has been extensively investigated, e.g., in connection with neuropsychiatric disorders. A 2006 scientific article stated that "over 300 behavioral, psychiatric, pharmacogenetic and other medical genetics papers" had analyzed the polymorphism. While often discussed as an example of gene-environment interaction, this contention is contested.

Some of the research that is conducted in the field of psychology is more "fundamental" than the research conducted in the applied psychological disciplines, and does not necessarily have a direct application. The subdisciplines within psychology that can be thought to reflect a basic-science orientation include biological psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and so on. Research in these subdisciplines is characterized by methodological rigor. The concern of psychology as a basic science is in understanding the laws and processes that underlie behavior, cognition, and emotion. Psychology as a basic science provides a foundation for applied psychology. Applied psychology, by contrast, involves the application of psychological principles and theories yielded up by the basic psychological sciences; these applications are aimed at overcoming problems or promoting well-being in areas such as mental and physical health and education.

Cultural neuroscience is a field of research that focuses on the interrelation between a human's cultural environment and neurobiological systems. The field particularly incorporates ideas and perspectives from related domains like anthropology, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience to study sociocultural influences on human behaviors. Such impacts on behavior are often measured using various neuroimaging methods, through which cross-cultural variability in neural activity can be examined.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tania Singer</span> German social neuroscientist (1969-)

Tania Singer is a German psychologist and social neuroscientist and the scientific director of the Max Planck Society's Social Neuroscience Lab in Berlin, Germany. Between 2007 and 2010, she became the inaugural chair of social neuroscience and neuroeconomics at the University of Zurich and was the co-director of the Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research in Zurich. Her research focuses on the developmental, neuronal, and hormonal mechanisms underlying human social behavior and social emotions such as compassion and empathy. She is founder and principal investigator of the ReSource project, one of the largest longitudinal studies on the effects of mental training on brain plasticity as well as mental and physical health, co-funded by the European Research Council. She also collaborates with the macro-economist Dennis Snower on research on caring economics. Singer's Caring Economics: Conversations on Altruism and Compassion, Between Scientists, Economists, and the Dalai Lama was published in 2015. She is the daughter of the neuroscientist Wolf Singer.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tali Sharot</span> Cognitive neuroscientist

Tali Sharot is an Israeli/British/American neuroscientist and professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London and MIT. Sharot began studying at Tel Aviv University, receiving a B.A. in economics in 1999, and an M.A. in psychology from New York University in 2002. She received her Ph.D. in psychology and neuroscience from New York University. Sharot is known for her research on the neural basis of emotion, decision making and optimism. Sharot hopes to better understand these processes to enhance overall well-being.

June Gruber is an American psychologist. She is associate professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Director of the Positive Emotion and Psychopathology Laboratory at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is known for her research on positive affectivity and mental health. She is a licensed clinical psychologist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tracy Dennis-Tiwary</span> American Female Clinical Psychologist

Tracy Dennis-Tiwary is an American clinical psychologist, author, health technology entrepreneur, and professor of psychology and neuroscience at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of The City University of New York. Her research explores emotion regulation and its role in mental health and illness, with a particular focus on anxiety and anxiety-related attention biases, as well as child emotional development. She is known for her nuanced view of the impact of digital technology and social media on psychological well-being in youth and adults, including adjustment, relationship quality, anxiety, and emotion regulation.

An empathy gap, sometimes referred to as an empathy bias, is a breakdown or reduction in empathy where it might otherwise be expected to occur. Empathy gaps may occur due to a failure in the process of empathizing or as a consequence of stable personality characteristics, and may reflect either a lack of ability or motivation to empathize.

References

  1. ↑ McGee, Hannah M.; Bradley, Clare (1994). Quality of Life Following Renal Failure: Psychosocial Challenges Accompanying High Technology Medicine. Psychology Press. ISBN   9783718655014.
  2. ↑ "Elaine Fox". Salon London - Science, Arts, Psychology. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  3. 1 2 3 "Elaine Fox". University College Oxford. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  4. ↑ Elaine Fox: Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain , retrieved 8 October 2019
  5. ↑ "About Us". .Oxford Centre for Emotions and Affective Neuroscience - CogBIAS Project. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  6. ↑ "Homepage". .Oxford Centre for Emotions and Affective Neuroscience - CogBIAS Project. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  7. ↑ "Elaine Fox — University of Oxford, Medical Sciences Division". www.medsci.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  8. 1 2 Fox, Elaine; Zougkou, Konstantina; Ridgewell, Anna; Garner, Kelly (2011). "The Serotonin Transporter Gene Alters Sensitivity to Attention Bias Modification: Evidence for a Plasticity Gene". Biological Psychiatry. 70 (11): 1049–1054. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2011.07.004. ISSN   0006-3223. PMC   3210325 . PMID   21840502.
  9. ↑ "Worrying About the Future, Ruminating on the Past—How Thoughts Affect Mental Health". Association for Psychological Science - APS. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  10. ↑ Fox, Elaine; Dutton, Kevin; Yates, Alan; Georgiou, George A.; Mouchlianitis, Elias (1 July 2015). "Attentional Control and Suppressing Negative Thought Intrusions in Pathological Worry". Clinical Psychological Science. 3 (4): 593–606. doi:10.1177/2167702615575878. PMC   4618297 . PMID   26504672.
  11. ↑ Coghlan, Andy (25 February 2009). "Happiness' gene helps you look on the bright side". www.newscientist.com. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  12. ↑ Coghlan, Andy. "Teen survey reveals gene for happiness". www.newscientist.com. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  13. 1 2 3 "UKRI appoints Mental Health Networks Impact and Engagement Coordinator - UK Research and Innovation". www.ukri.org. Retrieved 11 October 2019.
  14. ↑ "About the Author | Rainy Brain Sunny Brain by Professor Elaine FoxRainy Brain Sunny Brain by Professor Elaine Fox". www.rainybrainsunnybrain.com. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  15. ↑ "Professor Elaine Fox – Harvey Thorneycroft Limited". harveythorneycroft.co.uk. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  16. ↑ "BBC Two - Horizon, 2012-2013, The Truth About Personality". BBC. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  17. ↑ Mosley, Michael (8 July 2013). "How to become an optimist". The Times. ISSN   0140-0460 . Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  18. ↑ Wallop, Harry (5 July 2013). "Look on the bright side, banish the blues and think yourself happy". Daily Telegraph. ISSN   0307-1235 . Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  19. ↑ "Bringing the power of positivity to the Cheltenham Science Festival | BPS". www.bps.org.uk. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
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