Dr Stephanie Cook

Job: Lecturer in Psychology

Faculty: Health and Life Sciences

School/department: School of Applied Social Sciences

Address: De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH

T: 0116 2506547

E: stephanie.cook@dmu.ac.uk

W: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stephanie_Cook5

 

Personal profile

My research experience lies within the cognitive neuroscience field, with particular emphasis on the neural mechanisms underlying perception and cross-modal perception.

Most of my research to date has focused pain and smell. I have investigated how pain perception can be modulated by visual cues (e.g. placebo and nocebo), and how this is reflected in brain activity. More recently I have become interested in how pain is represented in people recovering from surgery and/or sports injuries. I have experience investigating how smells can influence our perception of objects and the world around us, and the neural correlates that underlie these types of effects.

I am incredibly interested in taste and eating behaviours, normal and abnormal eating habits and nutrition. I am passionate about investigating how these factors combine with lifestyle choices (e.g. exercise, drug/alcohol consumption) to contribute to psychological well-being and body image.

In addition to my primary interests, I have a broader interest in emotions and their neural correlates, and how humans perceive and portray their emotions. I am also interested in subjective valuation and decision making, and how this is applied in workplace culture and recruitment.

 

Research group affiliations

  • Cognition & Neuroscience, Health Psychology, Self & Identity

Key research outputs

  • Stephanie Cook, Katerina Kokmotou, Vicente Soto, Hazel Wright, Nicholas Fallon, Anna Thomas, Timo Giesbrecht, Matt Field, Andrej Stancak: Simultaneous odour-face presentation strengthens hedonic evaluations and event-related potential responses influenced by unpleasant odour. Neuroscience Letters (2018) DOI: 10.1016/j.neulet.2018.02.032

  • Stephanie Cook, Nicholas Fallon, Vicente Soto, John Tyson-Carr, Katerina Kokmotou, Anna Thomas, Timo Giesbrecht, Matt Field, Andrej Stancak: Pleasant and unpleasant odour-face combinations influence face and odour perception: An event-related potential study. Behavioural Brain Research (2017) DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2017.07.010.

  • Stephanie Cook, Nicholas Fallon, Hazel Wright, Anna Thomas, Timo Giesbrecht, Matt Field, Andrej Stancak: Pleasant and Unpleasant Odors Influence Hedonic Evaluations of Human Faces: An Event-Related Potential Study. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (2015) DOI:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00661

  • Nils Niederstrasser & Stephanie Cook (2020). Investigating the true effect of psychological variables measured prior to arthroplastic surgery on post-surgical outcomes: a p-curve analysis. The Journal of Pain.

  • Hannah Roberts, Vicente Soto, John Tyson-Carr, Katerina Kokmotou, Stephanie Cook, Nicholas Fallon, Timo Giesbrecht, and Andrej Stancak. "Tracking economic value of products in natural settings: a wireless EEG study." Frontiers in Neuroscience 12 (2018): 910.

  • John Tyson-Carr, Katerina Kokmotou, Vicente Soto, Stephanie Cook, Nicholas Fallon, Timo Giesbrecht, Andrej Stancak: The neural correlates of economic value and valuation context: An event-related potentials study. Journal of Neurophysiology (2018)

  • Andrej Stancak, Nicholas Fallon, Alessandar Fenu, Katerina Kokmotou, Vicente Soto, & Stephanie Cook (2018). Neural mechanisms of attentional switching between pain and a visual illusion task: a laser evoked potential study. Brain topography31(3), 430-446.

  • Vicente Soto, John Tyson-Carr, Katerina Kokmotou, Hannah Roberts, Stephanie Cook, Nicholas Fallon, Timo Giesbrecht, & Andrej Stancak (2018). Brain responses to emotional faces in natural settings: a wireless mobile EEG recording study. Frontiers in psychology9, 2003.

  • Kokmotou, Katerina, Stephanie Cook, Yuxin Xie, Hazel Wright, Vicente Soto, Nicholas Fallon, Timo Giesbrecht, Athanasios Pantelous, and Andrej Stancak. "Effects of loss aversion on neural responses to loss outcomes: An event-related potential study." Biological Psychology 126 (2017): 30-40.

  • Andrej Stancak, Stephanie Cook, Hazel Wright, Nicholas Fallon: Mapping multidimensional pain experience onto electrophysiological responses to noxious laser heat stimuli. NeuroImage (2015) DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.10.028

Research interests/expertise

  • Pain perception
  • Olfaction
  • Emotion
  • Cross-modal perception
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • EEG
  • Subjective valuation & decision making
  • Eating behaviours and nutrition
  • Psychology of sport and exercise
  • Workplace culture
  • Education, coaching & pedagogy

Areas of teaching

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Biological Psychology
  • Research Methods

Qualifications

  • PhD Psychology
  • MSc Research Methods for Psychology
  • BSc Psychology

Honours and awards

  • ESRC funding for PhD research, 2012

Conference attendance

  • Poster presentation: “Pleasant and Unpleasant Odors Influence Hedonic Evaluations of Human Faces: An Event-Related Potential Study” Cognitive Neuroscience Society Annual Meeting, 2015
  • Poster presentation: “Simultaneous odour-face presentation strengthens hedonic evaluations and event-related potential responses influenced by unpleasant odour” Cognitive Neuroscience Society Annual Meeting, 2016
  • Poster presentation: “Pleasant and unpleasant odour-face combinations influence face and odour perception: An event-related potential study.” Federation of European Neuroscience Societies Annual Meeting, 2016
  • Poster presentation: “Pleasant and Unpleasant Odors Influence Hedonic Evaluations of Human Faces: An Event-Related Potential Study” British Neuroscience Association Festival of Neuroscience, 2015

Consultancy work

 

Current research students

Sidra Kousar: "Modes of influence using technology: A Behavioural Ecology approach to facial displays" - secondary PhD supervisor, October 2019-present

Stephanie_Cook