I am an associate professor at the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology and research fellow at the Institute of Neurosciences (UB). After obtaining my PhD at the University of Barcelona with Prof. Carles Escera, with several research stays at the University of Bremen (Germany), I became a postdoctoral and senior researcher at the Department of Neuroscience/Campus Biotech, University of Geneva (Switzerland) with Prof. Patrik Vuilleumier, funded with several different grants (Beatriu de Pinós -Generalitat de Catalunya, Marie Curie COFUND -European Comission, Ambizione -Swiss National Science Foundation).
I am interested in the neural basis of emotion interactions with perception and attention, and more specifically on amygdala function and its role in awareness. I have mainly used human electrophysiology (scalp-EEG, intracranial EEG), neuroimaging (functional MRI), behavioral and other physiological measures (eye-tracking, electrodermal response).
Current team:
Martina Trisia Cinca-Tomás (PhD student)
Emmanouela Kosteletou (PhD student)
Christian Ramelow (Research assistant)
HumanSUBthreat
Our new project, recently funded by the European Research Council (ERC Consolidator grants; PI: Judith Domínguez-Borràs), aims at studying the subcortical neural pathways for threat detection within the auditory system. The project involves state-of-the-art electrophysiological and neuroimaging techniques to identify neural routes to the amygdala, and to test their anatomo-functional properties and temporal dynamics in humans.
Publications
A full list of publications is available in Scopus and Google Scholar.
Guex, R., Meaux, E., Mégevand, P., Domínguez-Borràs, J., Seeck, M., Vuilleumier, P. (2023). Frequency specific gaze modulation of emotional face processing in the human amygdala. Cerebral Cortex, 33(8):4859-4869.
Guex, R., Ros, T., Mégevand, P., Spinelli, L., Seeck, M., Vuilleumier, P., Domínguez-Borràs, J. (2022). Prestimulus amygdala spectral activity is associated with visual face awareness. Cerebral Cortex, 33(4):1044-1057.
Moyne, M., Legendre, G., Arnal, L., Kumar, S., Sterpenich, V., Seeck, M., Grandjean, D., Schwartz, S., Vuilleumier, P., Domínguez-Borràs, J. (2022). Brain reactivity to emotion persists in NREM sleep and is associated with individual dream recall. Cerebral Cortex Communications 3(1): tgac003.
Guex, R., Méndez-Bértolo, C., Moratti, S., Strange, B., Spinelli, L., Murray, R., Sander, D., Seeck, M., Vuilleumier, P., Domínguez-Borràs, J. (2020). Temporal dynamics of amygdala response to emotion- and action-relevance. Scientific Reports, 10, 11138.
Domínguez-Borràs, J., Moyne, M., Saj, A., Guex, R., Vuilleumier, P. (2020). Impaired emotional biases in visual attention after bilateral amygdala lesion. Neuropsychologia, 137, 3.
Domínguez-Borràs, J., Guex, R., Méndez-Bértolo, C., Legendre, G., Spinelli, L., Moratti, S., Frühholz, S., Mégevand, P., Arnal, L., Strange, B., Seeck, M., Vuilleumier, P. (2019). Human amygdala response to unisensory and multisensory emotion input: no evidence of superadditivity from intracranial recordings. Neuropsychologia, 131, 9-24.
Guex, R., Hofstetter, C., Domínguez-Borràs, J., Méndez-Bértolo, C., Sterpenich, V., Spinelli, L., Seeck, M., Vuilleumier, P. (2019). Neurophysiological evidence for early and valence-specific modulation of amygdala activity by emotional reappraisal. Biological Psychology, 145, 211-223.
Domínguez-Borràs, J., Rieger, S. W., Corradi-Dell’Acqua, C., Neveu, R., Vuilleumier, P. (2017). Fear spreading across senses: visual emotional events alter cortical responses to touch, audition and vision. Cerebral Cortex, 27(1), 68-82.
Selinger, L., Domínguez-Borràs, J., Escera, C. (2013). Phasic boosting of auditory processing by visual emotion. Biological Psychology, 94(3), 471-8.
Trautmann, S.A., Domínguez-Borràs, J., Escera, C., Herrmann, M., Fehr, T. (2013). The perception of dynamic and static facial expressions of happiness and disgust investigated by ERPs and fMRI constrained source analysis. PLOSone, 8(6):e66997.
Domínguez-Borràs, J., Armony, J.L., Maravita, A., Driver, J., Vuilleumier, P. (2013). Partial recovery of visual extinction by Pavlovian conditioning in a patient with hemispatial neglect. Cortex, 49(3), 891-898.
Domínguez-Borràs, J., Saj, A., Armony, J. L., Vuilleumier, P. (2012). Emotional processing and its impact on unilateral neglect and extinction. Neuropsychologia, 50(6), 1054-1071.
Domínguez-Borràs, J., Garcia-Garcia, M., Escera, C. (2012). Phase re-setting of gamma neural oscillations during novelty processing in an appetitive context. Biological Psychology, 89(3), 545-552.
Garcia-Garcia, M., Clemente, I., Domínguez-Borràs, J., Escera, C. (2010). Dopamine transporter regulates the enhancement of novelty processing by a negative emotional context. Neuropsychologia, 48(5), 1483-1488.
Garcia-Garcia, M, Yordanova, J., Kolev, V., Domínguez-Borràs, J., Escera, C. (2010). Tuning the brain for novelty detection under emotional threat: the role of increasing gamma phase-synchronization. Neuroimage, 49(1),1038-1044.
Domínguez-Borràs, J., Trautmann, S.A., Erhard, P., Fehr, T., Herrmann, M., Escera, C. (2009). Emotional context enhances auditory novelty processing in superior temporal gyrus. Cerebral Cortex, 19(7), 1521-1529.
Domínguez-Borràs, J., Garcia-Garcia, M., Escera, C. (2008). Emotional context enhances
auditory novelty processing: behavioural and electrophysiological evidence. European Journal of Neuroscience, 28(6), 1199-1206.
Domínguez-Borràs, J., Garcia-Garcia, M., Escera, C. (2008). Negative emotional context enhances auditory novelty processing. NeuroReport, 19(4), 503-7.
Garcia-Garcia, M., Domínguez-Borràs, J., SanMiguel, I., Escera, C. (2008). Electrophysiological and behavioral evidence of gender differences in the modulation of distraction by the emotional context. Biological Psychology, 79, 307-316.
Preprints
Legendre, G.; Moyne, M.; Domínguez-Borràs, J.; Kumar, S.; Sterpenich, V.; Schwartz, S.; Arnal, L. (2022). Scream’s roughness confers a privileged access to the brain during sleep. BioRxiv 2022.09.05.506631. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.09.05.506631
Book chapters
Domínguez-Borràs, J., Bourgeois, A., Vuilleumier, P. (2024). Affective biases in perception, attention and awareness (in press). In: P. Vuilleumier and J. L. Armony (Eds.). Handbook of Human Affective Neuroscience, 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press, New York.
Domínguez-Borràs, J. & Vuilleumier, P. (2022). Amygdala function in emotion, cognition, and behavior. In G. Miceli, P. Bartolomeo, V. Navarro. The temporal lobe. Handbook of Clinical Neurology, Elsevier, 187: 359-380.
Domínguez-Borràs, J. & Vuilleumier, P. (2016). Shivers down the brain. In D. Sander (Ed.). Emotions (p.60). Benteli Publishing, Zürich. ISBN 9783716518212.
Gupta, R., Domínguez-Borràs, J., Vuilleumier, P. (2015). Neural correlates of emotion- and reward-driven attentional capture (pp. 28-31). Affective Neuroscience ebook. Quaderns del campus per la pau. Editorial Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). ISBN 978-84-9064-527-7.
Domínguez-Borràs, J., Vuilleumier, P. (2013). Affective biases in attention and perception (pp. 331-356). In: P. Vuilleumier and J. L. Armony (Eds.). Handbook of Human Affective Neuroscience. Cambridge University Press, New York. ISBN 978-1-107-00111-4.
Domínguez-Borràs, J., Escera, C. (2008). Attentional bias towards threatening emotional face expressions. (pp. 99-112). In: Balconi, M. (Ed.). Emotional face comprehension. Neuropsychological perspectives. New York: Nova Science Publishers. ISBN 978-1-60456-759-5.