About

Florin Dolcos, PhD, is Co-Director at the Dolcos Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His primary research interests focus on the neural mechanisms underlying interactions between emotion and cognition. He employs a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) for spatial resolution and event-related potentials (ERP) for temporal resolution to investigate how emotion can both enhance and impair the neural correlates of memory processes in healthy young human participants. More recently, his research has expanded to explore the impact of cognition on emotion processing, as well as examining these processes in relation to individual differences across healthy young and older adults and clinical populations, including depressed and PTSD patients.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Neuroscience
• Computer Science
• Developmental psychology
• Social psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Psychotherapist
• Communication
• Psychiatry

Selected publications

• Effects of Sodium Reduction on the Physicochemical Characteristics of Pretzel Bites

  Journal of Food Science · 2026-05-01

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Excessive sodium intake is a global health concern that is largely driven by processed foods. This study evaluated the effects of sodium chloride (NaCl) reduction on the physicochemical properties of pretzel bites. Samples were formulated with five NaCl levels (T1 [0% reduction], T2 [15.91% reduction], T3 [29.28% reduction], T4 [40.53% reduction], T5 [50% reduction]) and assessed for moisture, color, water activity ( a w ), salinity, texture profile analysis (TPA), porosity (image‐based), dough volume, and pH. Findings revealed that dough moisture was significantly affected by salt concentration, though final product (baked) moisture remained unchanged. Moderate salt reductions resulted in lighter crust and crumb colors. a w showed a significant decrease at 50% NaCl reduction, suggesting a water‐binding disruption at this level. Salinity decreased proportionally to reductions in NaCl concentration. Textural parameters, including hardness and chewiness, increased with greater salt reduction, while springiness remained stable. Porosity was highest at moderate NaCl reduction levels and decreased under further reductions. During fermentation, lower NaCl concentrations resulted in increased dough volume and more rapid acidification, as evidenced by lower pH values. Overall, salt reduction affected multiple quality parameters of pretzel bites. Moderate reductions may support healthier formulations while preserving physical functionality. These findings highlight the importance of understanding salt reduction's effects on the quality of baked foods. Practical Applications Results showed that moderate sodium reductions produced minimal changes compared to the control (no reduction), suggesting that partial reformulation can maintain product quality while improving nutritional profiles. These findings provide a practical framework for reducing sodium in other baked products by identifying tolerance thresholds in product development, thereby supporting industry efforts to meet public health sodium‐reduction targets without compromising functional quality.

  PublisherDOI

• Editorial: Insights in emotion science

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2025-07-17

  editorialOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This century has witnessed unprecedented increasing interest and growth in the field of Emotion Science. The goal of this special edition Research Topic (RT) was to (1) shed light on recent progress made in this field, by providing a thorough overview of the state of the art in this area of research, (2) identify the greatest challenges in its various sub-disciplines, and (3) propose solutions addressing these challenges. This RT solicited forward-looking contributions from the editorial board members that would inspire, inform, and provide direction and guidance to researchers in the field. A total of twelve manuscripts have been accepted for inclusion in this RT, covering a wide variety of topicsfrom aspects related to emotion-cognition interactions in healthy functioning and clinical conditions to the role of Artificial Intelligence in emotion processing -and manuscript formats (reviews, empirical reports, opinion, articles, etc.).The twelve contributions can be organized around two main loosely defined themes: Emotion-Cognition-Behavior Interactions (7 articles) and Emotion Processing in Social Contexts (5 articles). Regarding the first theme, central to the efforts in the field are investigations of emotion-cognition interactions and the associated neural mechanisms (Figure 1). Five articles of the present RT focus more specifically on aspects circumscribed by this general area of research. First, the review by Dolcos et al. (2025) discusses opposing effects of emotion on cognition at multiple levels of analysis and emphasizes the need to consider the various factors that can influence enhancing and impairing effects of emotion on cognition. Although identification of a coherent theoretical framework that covers all levels of emotion-cognition interactions was beyond its scope, the review by Dolcos et al. Second, also investigating emotion-memory interactions, the mega-analysis by Ventura-Bort et al., (2024) specifically focusses on the impact of emotion on source memory, based on data from multiple studies using a similar design. The results point to dissociating effects of arousal on memory for contextual information of events (source memory) versus memory for specific neutral aspects of events (item memory). Namely, consistent with available evidence (reviewed in Dolcos et al., 2024), results showed a recollection-based retrieval advantage for pleasant and unpleasant source contextual details, but there was no evidence for significant influence of the context's affective category on item memory. Third, on a related topic regarding the impact of emotion on cognition, but in the context of distracting effects (Iordan et al., 2013), the study by Ferrari and colleagues (2024) investigated whether the behavioral interference of emotional distraction is attenuated following repeated (trained) exposure to novel task-irrelevant emotional pictures. Results showed attenuated interference from emotional distracters after sustained training, but the electrophysiological markers of affective processing, as measured with EEG recordings, were unaffected by the training. This points to a possible dissociation between behavioral and neural effects in the impact of emotional distraction.Two other articles expand the discussion of emotion-cognition-behavior interactions specifically linked to the impact of emotion on decision-making. The perspective article by Buelow and colleagues (2023) examines decision-making as a complex executive function involving affective, cognitive, and personality aspects, and also proposes that reconceptualization of decision-making by integrating affective and cognitive aspects can improve task psychometrics and clinical utility. The authors identify limitations of previous decision-making research (low validity and reliability of the tasks) and also provide suggestions for improvements, including the need to: (a) assess decision-making as a specific cognitive ability, (b) further assess the test-retest reliability of decision-making tasks, and (c) reimagine future research by considering implications for both basic research and clinical investigations. The mini review by Ha and Lim (2023) explores the link between emotion and eating decisions and behaviors. The authors discuss emotional eating as linked to disinhibited decisions driven by heightened reward values to eat palatable foods, in response to negative emotions and social isolation. Emotional eating is also examined as a potentially maladaptive coping strategy under negative emotion and stress, linked to dysfunctional interactions between the brain reward system (involved in hedonic eating decisions) and the brain systems associated with executive control (involved in health-oriented eating decisions).The last two contributions of this theme explore basic physiological and behavioral effects of emotion associated with two fundamental dimensions of affective stimuli and experiences: arousal (i.e., intensity) and valence (i.e., pleasantness/ unpleasantness) (Russell, 1980). Focusing on physiological responses associated with experienced affective states, the study by Leung and Romano (2024) challenges the common notion that the Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR), associated with goosebump-inducing situations, is exclusively interpreted as linked to positive valence. Instead, their findings show that ASMR can occur linked to both positive and negative emotional situations, suggesting a more general link to emotional arousal rather than to positive valence only. The authors also highlight the therapeutic relevance of considering valence-related differences in experiencing and interpreting ASMRs. The article by Marin and Gingras (2024) discusses, through evolutionary lenses, how music-induced emotions can influence sexual attraction and behavior, and highlights how vocalizations and music contribute to the communication of emotions. The authors also point to the music's ability to increase emotional arousal and influence mate selection and aesthetic display, and also discuss evidence of cross-modal transfer of arousal from music to other sensory/perceptual domains. This report also suggests investigation of this topic through triadic interactions of emotion (through music), cognition, and decision-making.Regarding the second main theme covered in the present RT, three of the contributions cover more generic aspects of social cognition and learning in healthy functioning and clinical groups and the other two specifically focus on empathy. First, the article by Jellema et al. ( 2024) emphasizes social intuition as instrumental in successful human interactions, with a focus on the implicit, involuntary, nature of social intuition, rather than on higher-level explicit Theory-of-Mind processes. The authors argue that traditional implicit learning tasks are insufficient due to their lack of social context and affective components, and propose a new paradigm associating valences with identities through implicitly learned bodily cues. This article also discusses neural mechanisms associated with social intuition (i.e., the mirror neuron system) and also points to clinical conditions in which impairments in implicit social/affective learning are relevant (e.g., autism spectrum disorder). Second, the study by Namba and colleagues (2024) used computational models to investigate value learning and detection of emotionally-valued neutral faces in young and older adults. The authors conclude that the sensitivity of learning feedback decreases with age. They found that the learning rates for reward and punishment were higher for younger than for older participants, who also reduced sensitivity to negative faces. Namely, older participants did not show different learning rates between reward and punishment trials, unlike the young participants who had higher learning rate parameter values for punishment than for reward trials. Third, the research by Abo Foul et al. ( 2024) examined emotion perception from incongruent face-body composites in three groups: Parkinson's (PD), schizophrenia (SZ), and healthy controls (HC). When presented with conflicting cues, the PD group tended to categorize the emotion based on the body expression, whereas the HC group relied more on the facial expression and the SZ group showed no consistent prioritization pattern. These findings were independent of the ability to recognize isolated face or body emotions, cognitive function, depression, or motor symptoms in the PD and SZ groups, and have implications for the way these individuals interpret emotions in others.Finally, the last two contributions of this theme focus on empathy in humans and AI agents. The review by Mansur and DeFelipe (2024) explores empathy from an artistic perspective, as a fundamental way of conveying emotions in humans. Basing their discussion of empathy on da Vinci's work (both in arts and human anatomy), the authors also make connections to the German romanticism, renaissance, and the philosophy of art creation. The authors also highlight the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in social neuroscience, to explore the neural basis of empathy, thus bringing us closer to realizing da Vincis's vision of uniting artistic perception with scientific explanation. On the other hand, the opinion article by Tagesson and Stenseke (2024) discusses the skepticism surrounding the empathic abilities of AI agents, particularly related to the negative perception arising when people realize that the empathy is AI-generated. Inspired by the correspondence article by Perry (2023), and consistent with a broader aversion toward the prospect of artificial empathy (AE), the authors suggest that human attitudes towards AI can change to perceive AE as genuine. They argue that, as AI sophistication increases and human attitudes evolve, [aspects of] AE could be seen as "real empathy".

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Implicit Abandonment Distress: Testing the Dynamic Link Between Schema Activation and Physiological Arousal

  Collabra Psychology · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access

  Psychodynamic theory has been criticized as adhering to models of psychopathology that cannot lead to testable predictions and knowledge accumulation. To address this issue, we proposed an account of an implicit memory mechanism (a schema of abandonment) and measured the activation of this latent disposition in two meaningful contexts. Two hundred undergraduates were randomly assigned to either a social rejection or a comparison (non-reject) group, which was more ambiguous in nature. Explicit/implicit schema measures and psychophysiological data were used to test the relationship between schema activation and distress. As hypothesized, only the implicit schema measure was associated with physiological arousal; however, the nature of activation ran counter to our prediction. For participants with strong implicit abandonment schema content, significant arousal occurred in the comparison (non-reject) ambiguous group rather than the social rejection group. The findings demonstrate that: (1) implicit schema processes are indeed implicated in abandonment distress, and (2) situations in which the meaning of an event is more open to interpretation are likely more relevant to how schemas work. Altogether, findings suggest that psychodynamic processes are testable and may help account for distress dynamics, such as attempts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.

  PublisherDOI

• Multimodal Imaging Investigations of Human Brain Function and Plasticity

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-07-22

  book-chapterSenior author

  Abstract Individual methods measuring brain function typically provide only partial information about the links between spatial and temporal aspects of neural activity associated with psychological phenomena and their plasticity. Multimodal approaches offer the possibility of elucidating these links by capitalizing on the strengths of combining multiple techniques. This chapter briefly discusses some of the benefits and challenges of multimodal brain recordings and provides some select examples of approaches capitalizing on techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography / event-related potentials (EEG/ERP), event-related optical signals (EROS), and positron emission tomography (PET), as well as some combinations of these methods along with their possible applications to examining aspects of brain plasticity. Included among the examples is a recent proof-of-concept protocol for a novel technique using simultaneously recorded fMRI, ERP, and EROS. Results from the examples highlight ways in which multimodal approaches can capture and integrate converging and complementary measures of brain activity that are not currently possible using typical unimodal techniques. Overall, multimodal approaches offer new opportunities for examining complex aspects of brain function and plasticity that can significantly contribute to better understanding and supporting brain health.

  PublisherDOI

• Dissociating and linking divergent effects of emotion on cognition: insights from current research and emerging directions

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2025-05-14 · 3 citations

  reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This century has witnessed unprecedented increasing interest in the investigation of emotion-cognition interactions and the associated neural mechanisms. The present review emphasizes the need to consider the various factors that can influence enhancing and impairing effects of emotion on cognition, in studies of both healthy and clinical groups. First, we discuss advances in understanding the circumstances in which emotion enhances or impairs cognition at different levels, both within the same processes (e.g., perception, episodic memory) and across different processes (i.e., episodic vs. working memory). Then, we discuss evidence regarding these opposing effects of emotion in a larger context, of the response to stressors, and linked to the role of individual differences (personality, genetic) affecting stress sensitivity. Finally, we also discuss evidence linking these opposing effects of emotion in a clinical group (PTSD), where they are both deleterious, and based on comparisons across groups with opposing affective biases: healthy aging ( positive bias ) vs. depression ( negative bias ). These issues have relevance for understanding mechanisms of emotion-cognition interactions in healthy functioning and in psychopathology, which can inspire training interventions to increase resilience and well-being.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Role of Sex Differences in the Link Between Emotion Regulation and Psychological Well-Being During a Major Mental Health Crisis

  Behavioral Sciences · 2025-05-07 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Emotion regulation (ER) strategies, such as reappraisal and suppression, have been linked to psychological well-being. The available evidence points to the differential impact of ER strategies on resilience and post-traumatic growth (PTG), as factors related to well-being, as well as to sex differences in the link between ER preference and well-being. However, previous studies are mixed regarding these links. To address this issue, college students (N = 1254) recruited between 2020 and 2023 reported their habitual use of ER strategies, resilience and PTG during the COVID-19 pandemic, which, as a global health crisis, has raised not only severe physical health concerns but also mental distress. First, reappraisal was positively associated with both resilience and PTG, whereas suppression was negatively correlated with these measures. Second, female participants had lower suppression scores and higher PTG scores than male participants. Third, a moderation analysis showed that the positive relationship between reappraisal and PTG was stronger in female participants, whereas the negative relationship between suppression and PTG was stronger in male participants. Overall, these findings shed light on the links among ER strategies, resilience, and PTG and have relevance for customized training in the use of reappraisal to increase well-being in women and men.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Opposing Effects of Pre-Encoding Stress on Neural Substrates of Item and Emotional Source Memory Retrieval

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• How Likely Is it that I Would Act the Same Way: Modeling Moral Judgment During Uncertainty

  Cognitive Science · 2024-11-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Moral rules come with exceptions, and moral judgments come with uncertainty. For instance, stealing is wrong and generally punished. Yet, it could be the case that the thief is stealing food for their family. Such information about the thief's context could flip admonishment to praise. To varying degrees, this type of uncertainty regarding the context of another person's behavior is ever-present in moral judgment. Hence, we propose a model of how people evaluate others' behavior: We argue that individuals principally judge the righteousness of another person's behavior by assessing the likelihood that they would act the same way if they were in the person's shoes. That is, if you see another person steal, you will consider the contexts where you too would steal and assess the likelihood that any of these contexts are true, given the available information. This idea can be formalized as a Bayesian model that treats moral judgment as probabilistic reasoning. We tested this model across four studies (N = 601) involving either fictional moral vignettes or economic games. The studies yielded converging evidence showing that the proposed model better predicts moral judgment under uncertainty than traditional theories that emphasize social norms or perceived harm/utility. Overall, the present studies support a new model of moral judgment with the potential to unite research on social judgment, decision-making, and probabilistic reasoning. Beyond this specific model, the present studies also more generally speak to how individuals parse uncertainty by integrating across different possibilities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Opposing effects of pre-encoding stress on neural substrates of item and emotional contextual source memory retrieval

  Neurobiology of Stress · 2024-11-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Although the mediating role of the stress hormone systems in memory for single- especially emotional- events is well-stablished, less is known about the influence of stress on memory for associated contextual information (source memory). Here, we investigated the impact of acute stress on the neural underpinnings of emotional contextual source memory. Participants underwent a stress or a control manipulation before they encoded objects paired with pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant backgrounds. One week later, item and contextual source memory were tested. Acute stress modulated the neural signature of item and contextual source memory in an opposite fashion: stressed participants showed larger activation in the precuneus and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) during the retrieval of items, while the retrieval of contextual unpleasant information was associated with lower activation in the angular gyrus (AG) and mPFC. Furthermore, as revealed by cross-region representational similarity analyses, stress also reduced the memory reinstatement of the previously encoded visual cortex representations of object/unpleasant background pairings in the AG and mPFC. These results suggest that pre-encoding stress induction increases the activity of memory-related regions for single items but reduces the activity of these regions during the retrieval of contextual unpleasant information. Our findings provide new insights into the dissociative effects of stress on item and contextual source memory which could have clinical relevance for stress-related disorders.

  PublisherDOI

• Reconciling opposing effects of emotion on relational memory: Behavioral, eye-tracking, and brain imaging investigations.

  Journal of Experimental Psychology General · 2024-09-19 · 16 citations

  article

  (item-context match) RM accuracy, (2) accounting for emotion-attention interactions via eye-tracking and task manipulation, and (3) using stimuli with integrated item-context content. Challenging the prevalent view, we identified both enhancing and impairing effects. First, emotion enhanced subjective RM, separately and when confirmed by accurate objective RM. Second, emotion impaired objective RM through attention capturing, but it enhanced RM accuracy when attentional effects were statistically accounted for using eye-tracking data. Third, emotion also enhanced RM when participants were cued to focus on contextual details during encoding, likely by increasing item-context binding. Finally, functional magnetic resonance imaging data recorded from a subset of participants showed that emotional enhancement of RM was associated with increased activity in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, along with increased intra-MTL and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex-MTL functional connectivity. Overall, these findings reconcile evidence regarding opposing effects of emotion on RM and point to possible training interventions to increase RM specificity in healthy functioning, posttraumatic stress disorder, and aging, by promoting item-context binding and diminishing memory decontextualization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sanda Dolcos

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  72 shared

• Roberto Cabeza

  45 shared

• Gregory McCarthy

  MSD (UK) Limited (United Kingdom)

  30 shared

• Alexandru D. Iordan

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  28 shared

• Ekaterina Denkova

  University of Miami

  25 shared

• Yuta Katsumi

  Harvard University

  24 shared

• Matthew Moore

  Stanford University

  24 shared

• Rajendra A. Morey

  Duke University

  18 shared

Awards & honors

• Laird Cermak Award for Early Contributions to Memory Researc…
• Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Rese…
• NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the Natural Sciences & E…
• CPRF Award from the Canadian Psychiatric Research Foundation