Francisca Ayres Ribeiro

Project Description:  My research interests lie at the intersection of affective empathy, self-other distinction/merging, social relationships, and social networks. Specifically, I am interested in the role of affective empathy in determining one’s position within a group or social environment, as well as its influence on the self-other merging experienced in close friendships or highly influential social groups. By combining behavioral data, neuroimaging (fMRI), and social network analysis using a longitudinal approach, our main goal is to understand the relationship between individual differences in affective empathy and social positioning, as well as the driving effects of self-other merging in social and group contexts.

Grant Information: After my Master’s thesis, I was awarded a 1-year research scholarship by the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), a national public agency supporting research in science, technology, and innovation in Portugal. This grant supported my investigation of EEG and fMRI spatiotemporal organization during rest using a network science approach, a project led by me and supervised by Prof. Patrícia Figueiredo and Prof. Alexandre P. Francisco.

Currently, my PhD is part of the larger GUTS consortium, which includes Christian Keysers and Valeria Gazzola, and is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (OCW) Research Program: Gravitation.

Publications:  Ayres-Ribeiro, F., Wirsich, J., Abreu, R., Jorge, J., Teixeira, A.S., Francisco, A.P., & Figueiredo, P. (2023, March). Brain’s Dynamic Functional Organization with Simultaneous EEG-fMRI Networks. In International Workshop on Complex Networks (pp. 1-13). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.

Fun Fact About Me: I will always make friends with all the cats in the neighborhood.