Dr. Sanda Pletikosić Tončić

Sanda Pletikosić Tončić teaches several courses on biological psychology (Biological foundations of behaviour, Biological psychology, Functional organization of the cortex, Neuroscience and education). She is currently collaborating on a research project Cognitive-Affective Determinants of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (principal investigator prof. Mladenka Tkalčić, PhD; funded by University of Rijeka: uniri-drustv-18-62).

She researches various determinants of health outcomes, specifically quality of life and symptom severity, in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) patients. Some of the research questions addressed in this research project are directed at examining the correlation of everyday stress and mood with symptom severity, exploring the role of various aspects of anxiety, depression and personality traits in quality of life impairment of IBS patients, researching correlations of biological markers like faecal calprotectin with quality of life and symptom severity, examining the relationship of interoception, anxiety and health outcomes, and testing some aspects of attention in IBS patients as well as relating them to avoidance and control behaviours, quality of life and anxiety. Different types of research designs are used for investigating these research questions, from correlational and prospective to experimental studies, and in addition to self-assessment measures, cognitive tasks, physiological measures, and biomarkers have also been used.

She is also a collaborator on an international project Computational psychosomatic medicine based on predictive coding: Basic study on irritable bowel syndrome which is lead by researchers from Nagoya University in Japan (principal investigator prof. Hideki Ohira, PhD). The aim of the project is to test a model of predictive coding by using a decision-making task in IBS patients and a matched sample of healthy controls.