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EASP – European Association of Social Psychology

Travel Grant Report by Karol Lewczuk

24.09.2016, by Sibylle Classen in grant report

University of Warsaw, Poland; Participation in the 5th Cognitive and Affective Neurophysiology Summer School in Porto, Portugal

The EASP Travel grant allowed me to participate in the V CAN - 5th Cognitive and Affective Neurophysiology Summer School. The event was held between 5th and 9th September 2016 in the beautiful city of Porto, Portugal. The summer school was organized by the Laboratory of Neuropsychophysiology at the University of Porto and attended by almost 20 researchers from all around the Europe. Broadly speaking, the summer school was focused on acquisition, processing and analysis of EEG signal.

Attending this summer school was very valuable experience for me. I had an opportunity to learn a great deal about application of Electroencephalography (EEG) and especially Event Related Potential (ERP) techniques to the study of affective and cognitive processes. Summer school covered both the theoretical and practical aspects of neurophysiology and neurophysiological data recording/analysis. During the course of several days, we went through all the stages of dealing with electroencephalography: data collection (practical part), signal processing - ERP analysis in time and frequency domains and - at the end - statistical analysis of the preprocessed data. As a result, I developed a deeper understanding of electroencephalography, I now know a lot more about the potential insights into psychological processes that this technique can provide.

My summer school experience was also great because of numerous less formal discussions that I had with other participants and the wonderful teaching staff. We talked about various aspects of neurophysiological research that I was interested in and engaged in fierce debates about current issues in psychology.

Furthermore, the reason that the summer school was so benefiting for me, is that it suited my current needs perfectly. My current research project is aimed at investigating the time course of emotion control effectiveness over time. The project is now in the planning phase, and the summer school broadened my thinking about ways in which I can use neurophysiological data to achieve its aims.