Dr Dominique Makowski
Cognitive neuropsychology of reality perception, and the role of the emotions and bodily signals in shaping our conscious experience
Join the Reality Bending Lab (ReBeL), a vibrant environment where we study reality perception, fake news, illusions, fiction, deception, self-control, and more, using EEG and physiological signals. We also develop open-source tools, software and new methods to answer our questions.
Research projects with me often involve investigating the role of active mechanisms (e.g. cognitive control, emotions, interoception, immersion, meditation, deception…) in shaping our sense of reality (i.e., the feeling and belief that we - and our environment - are real), as well as their crystallised form giving rise to dispositional characteristics in the form of personality phenotypes and neuropsychological profiles.
Students can acquire skills in programming (R and Python) and data analysis, EEG and physiological signals (ECG, EDA, Respiration) data acquisition and analysis, and working with clinical and applied populations.
Visit the Reality Bending Lab pages for more information.
Key references
- Makowski, D., Sperduti, M., Pelletier, J., Blondé, P., La Corte, V., Arcangeli, M., ... & Piolino, P. (2019). Phenomenal, bodily and brain correlates of fictional reappraisal as an implicit emotion regulation strategy. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 19, 877-897.
- Lau, Z. J., Pham, T., Chen, S. A., & Makowski, D. (2022). Brain entropy, fractal dimensions and predictability: A review of complexity measures for EEG in healthy and neuropsychiatric populations. European Journal of Neuroscience, 56(7), 5047-5069.
- Makowski, D., Lau, Z. J., Pham, T., Paul Boyce, W., & Annabel Chen, S. H. (2021). A Parametric Framework to Generate Visual Illusions Using Python. Perception, 50(11), 950-965.
- Makowski, D., Sperduti, M., Blonde, P., Nicolas, S., & Piolino, P. (2020). The heart of cognitive control: Cardiac phase modulates processing speed and inhibition. Psychophysiology, 57(3), e13490.