I am docent (adjunct professor) of Comparative Cognitive Neuroscience and an Academy Researcher, based in University of Jyväskylä, Finland. My interests are social cognition and emotionality in both humans and non-human animals—especially mammals such as domestic dogs. I am also interested in developing novel, non-invasive physiological methods for linking animal behavior and cognition; to date, we have deployed eye gaze tracking, non-invasive EEG/ERPs, thermal imaging and heart rate measures.
My other interests are in human social cognition; human perception and interpretation of animals; the development of expertise in comprehending nonverbal social cues across species; and human-animal interaction together with its similarities and differences from intraspecies interaction. Human studies have involved both psychometric and psychophysiological scales and non-invasive physiological and brain research (fMRI, MEG, EEG/ERP, eye gaze tracking). My research topics are inherently interdisciplinary, requiring mutual trust, knowledge and collaboration from the fields of psychology, cognitive science, biology, animal science, veterinary medicine, computer science and biomedical engineering, to name a few.
I have a soft spot for One Health, One Welfare –thinking, where human health and wellbeing are seen in the broader context of interaction between human, animal and environmental health. Globally this means setting human actions into a much larger perspective, but it also has an effect at the level of individuals, for example, within the interaction of a pet and a human family.
