Professor Christian Montag - Affective Neuroscience

Nov 21 2023 • 50 mins

Hello there!

We’re Dr. Jane Hession and Ronan Healy. We’re a husband and wife team and co-founders of the service design studio How Might We - www.howmightwe.design

We're passionate about Play and provide online and in-house training in the LEGO Serious Play method to:

1) Third-level Educators - https://bit.ly/LSP_Ed_Innovators

2) Organisational Innovators - https://bit.ly/LSP_Org_Innovators

We're delighted to have you as a listener. Please get in touch with us if you would like to be a guest or have a guest suggestion.

Episode Two

Christian had to be our first guest, considering he worked closely with the late Jaak Panksepp.

Christian's work has also been a great inspiration to us, such as his book 'Animal Emotions: How They Drive Human Behaviour' plus his research papers:

1) How the six primary emotional systems are linked to the Big Five personality traits

2) Linking primary emotional traits to ideological attitudes and personal value types

3) The relationship between parenting behaviour and the personality of Kindergarten children

Like every episode, we want to know the person behind the research, so chat with Christian about his childhood, where he spent quality "me time" playing guitar and writing songs.

We also chatted about Christian's career and how it led him to work with Jaak Panksepp. We briefly touch on elements of Affective Neuroscience and have provided a wealth of resources below should you wish to learn more.

We highly advise you to:

1) read the short (and free!) book 'Animal Emotions: How They Drive Human Behaviour'

2) take the ANPS test to see how you score on Primary Emotions (plus your answers will help contribute to the data set)

Professor Christian Montag

Christian Montag is interested in the molecular genetics of personality and emotions. He combines molecular genetics with brain imaging techniques such as structural/functional MRI to understand individual differences in human nature better. Adding to this, he conducts research in the fields of Neuroeconomics and (Internet) addiction, including digital phenotyping and mobile sensing approaches.

Christian received his Diploma in Psychology in September 2006. In 2009, he achieved his PhD degree, and in 2011, the Venia Legendi for Psychology. As a post-doc, he also carried out research at the SCAN lab at Stony Brook University, NY, USA.

Since September 2014, he has been a Professor of Molecular Psychology at Ulm University, Ulm, Germany. From 2016-2022, he was a visiting professor at the Neuscan lab at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu, China.

Free Book (definitely worth a read!)

https://punctumbooks.com/titles/animal-emotions-how-they-drive-human-behavior/

Free test (definitely worth 10 minutes!)

https://affective-neuroscience-personality-scales.jimdosite.com/take-the-test/

How the six primary emotional systems are linked to the Big Five personality traits

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84366-8

Linking primary emotional traits to ideological attitudes and personal value types

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0279885

The relationship between parenting behaviour and the personality of kindergarten children

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1048391/full

More of Christian's Research

⁠https://www.uni-ulm.de/en/in/psy-mp/team/christian-montag/⁠