I did my undergraduate studies majoring in psychology at University of Turku, Finland. I defended my PhD on neurocognitive mechanisms of social attention at University of Turku in 2006. After that, I worked as a post-doc at the MRC CBU in Cambridge, UK studying neural mechanisms of face perception in Andy Calder’s group. I returned to Finland in 2008, to work as Academy of Finland junior fellow and subsequently as senior fellow at Turku Pet Center and Aalto University. After a four-year appointment as Assistant professor in cognitive neuroscience at Aalto University, I returned to the University of Turku with my laboratory. Currently I lead the Human Emotion Systems laboratory at Turku PET Centre and Department of Psychology, University of Turku.

Our group studies functional and molecular neural mechanisms of human emotions and social interaction in complex, life-like settings with magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, magneto- and electroencephalography and behavioural techniques. I have written over 100 scientific articles on brain basis of emotions and social cognition, and acquired more than 4M€ grant money for our group. Currently our research is funded by the European Research Council, the Academy of Finland, The Sigrid Juselius Stiftelse, Jane and Aatos Erkko foundation and Signe och And Gyllenberg's stiftelse