Role
Vanessa is a Lecturer in Psychology and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Career overview
Vanessa completed her PhD in Psychology at the University of Sussex in 2020 under the supervision of Prof Jamie Ward and Prof Hugo Critchley. She then worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Community and Health Research Unit (CaHRU) at the University of Lincoln, UK.
Vanessa's areas of academic interest are: Bodily representations; Interoception; Embodiment; Experiential learning; Research methods.
Research areas
Vanessa has conducted research in cognitive neuroscience, behavioural psychology and in emergency and pre-hospital healthcare. Her research has mainly focused on bodily representations, vicarious pain perception and on how the processing of internal bodily signals can influence behaviour and experience.
Publications
Botan, V., Critchley, H. D., & Ward, J. (2021). Different psychophysiological and clinical symptoms are linked to affective versus sensory vicarious pain experiences. Psychophysiology, 58(8), e13826.
Lush, P., Botan, V., Scott, R. B., Seth, A. K., Ward, J., & Dienes, Z. (2020). Trait phenomenological control predicts experience of mirror synaesthesia and the rubber hand illusion. Nature communications, 11(1), 4853.
Botan, V., Fan, S., Critchley, H., & Ward, J. (2018). Atypical susceptibility to the rubber hand illusion linked to sensory-localised vicarious pain perception. Consciousness and Cognition, 60, 62-71.
Botan, V., Bowling, N. C., Banissy, M. J., Critchley, H., & Ward, J. (2018). Individual differences in vicarious pain perception linked to heightened socially elicited emotional states. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 2355.
Rae, C. L., Botan, V. E., Gould van Praag, C. D., Herman, A. M., Nyyssönen, J. A., Watson, D. R., ... & Critchley, H. D. (2018). Response inhibition on the stop signal task improves during cardiac contraction. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 9136.