Olga Pollatos was appointed Junior Professor for Emotion and Motivation Psychology at the University of Potsdam in 2009. Her research focuses on embodied cognition and affective neuroscience. She examines the relationship between emotional processes and bodily signals using high density EEG, functional MRI or peripheral physiology measures. Personality traits like interoceptive sensitivity, alexithymia, depression and emotional coping styles are of interest and are assessed in interaction with their underlying neural correlates. Further research deals with the development of body perception in children and its relationship to weight and eating disorders. She is also interested in the perception and processing of pain and empathy for pain. Other research interests refer to the interaction of time perception and internal signal processing. The interest on the interface to psychology and psychiatry and neurology extends the research field into eating disorders, somatoform and anxiety disorders.