Affect Science in Medicine

This initiative seeks to promote scientific excellence in an area considered foundational for psychosomatic medicine while further enhancing the clinical relevance of our research.

Many advances have been made in affect science in recent years that are relevant to our field, but the translation to biomedical research and clinical application is in its infancy.

Six topic areas have been identified:

• Early life adversity and emotions
• Physiological manifestations of emotions
• Implicit measures of affect
• Bidirectional brain-body interactions
• Maladaptive emotion regulation
• Emotion in social relationship

A major goal of this SIG is to generate a separate white paper on each topic. Each white paper will take stock of current knowledge and methods and address the research agenda for the foreseeable future regarding both basic science and clinical applications.