M&B doctoral candidates

Despite decades of research, a unifying account of the functional correlates of retinotopic remapping remains elusive. To this end, the aim of my empirical investigation is to provide the first unified mechanistic understanding of the functional consequences of retinotopic remapping. In addition to this, my work also aims to provide the first psychophysical and computational account of what I refer to as the "peri-saccadic curvature of visual space”.

Prof. Dr. Jonathan Flombaum

Prof. Dr. Dr. Henrik Walter

Prof. Dr. Michael Pauen

How sure are we of what we feel at a given moment? How much do we know about our emotional reactions? Much has been studied about emotional and metacognitive processing in humans, but not how these two cognitive processes work together. Studies about metacognition of emotion recognition have shown that we do know when we correctly recognise particular emotional states in others, but it remains unknown whether we are also able to do it for our own emotions. My aim is to investigate metacognitive monitoring of our own affective states, whether this ability can be trained via meditation practices, and whether it is impaired in autistic individuals. I plan to do that by comparing subjective reports of emotion with brain and peripheral activity recordings, indicative of emotional responses.

Prof. Dr. Isabel Dziobek

Prof. Dr. Dr. Henrik Walter

Elisa Filevich PhD

This project aims to investigate whether hippocampal patients show deficits in integrating contextual information into memory-guided navigation. We aim to conduct a spatial navigation experiment in a virtual reality (VR) environment accompanied by electroencephalography (EEG) brain activity measurements to study how contextual factors modulate spatial learning and the corresponding brain activation patterns.

Prof. Dr. Carsten Finke

Prof. Dr. Christoph J. Ploner

Thalamocortical dysconnectivity is observed across various psychopathologies (e.g., migraine aura) and altered states of consciousness (e.g., induced by psychedelic drugs) that involve visual hallucinatory phenomena. In my thesis project, I use flicker light stimulation (FLS), which is an experimental tool to selectively induce visual hallucinations in healthy participants, at varying frequency and rhythmicity to test which components critically contribute to the hallucinatory experience. Further, I use thalamic and visual topographic parcellation atlases to test the effects of FLS on thalamocortical dysconnectivity patterns amongst specific thalamic and cortical subregions and how they link to the visual experience.

Prof. Dr. Felix Blankenburg

Prof. Dr. Felix Bermpohl

Dr. Timo Torsten Schmidt

Metacognition is introspection into our own cognitive processes. Up to date, metacognitive research has been focusing on visual and memory domains, with little attention given to the motor domain. Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an interesting case for metacognition of action, as it is characterized not only with motor, but also with cognitive symptoms. Some metacognitive deficits have been observed in PD as well. However, it is not clear how far they extend. In my project, I will first study metacognitive ability in PD. If it is poorer in PD than in healthy participants, it can be a potential point for intervention. Second, I will look how metacognition of action relates to metacognition in other domains. This will inform us about domain-specificity or generality of metacognitive mechanisms.

Elisa Filevich, PhD

Prof. Dr. Michael Pauen

Prof. Dr. Andrea Kühn

Human cognition usually occurs against the backdrop of social interaction; however, experimental psychology research is still confined to solitary lab environments – to address this, I design immersive virtual reality social experiences to investigate changes in perception that occur after ritual participation in groups and explore the cognitive mechanisms underlying our tendencies to cooperate, conform, and compete. Further, my project investigates brain systems that implement the cascade of neural events associated with collective behaviour.

Prof. Dr. Marcel Brass

Prof. Dr. Isabel Dziobek

Prof. Dr. Marcel Brass

Prof. Dr. Felix Blankenburg

Prof. Dr. Radoslaw Martin Cichy

The sense of agency is the feeling of intentionally moving our body and through it, controlling the environment. The sense of agency is central to our daily experiences, and dysfunctions of agency are commonly reported in several psychiatric and movement related conditions. In spite of the plethora of studies already conducted to understand the human sense of agency and the neural mechanisms underlying it, there is still no consensus regarding the nature of this experience. This may be due to the diversity in the definitions, experimental paradigms and agency reports employed. This project addresses these problems and aims to provide a unified paradigm and theoretical framework where the different definitions can be tested together and therefore directly compared. We will use a novel experimental paradigm to investigate the sense of agency by systematically modifying its different components (the movement itself vs. it’s effects on the environment). We will also use metacognitive methods that will allow us to remove confounds (most importantly, response biases in subjective measures) that are often present in the typical agency task. Once we validate the paradigm, we will combine it with neurophysiological measures like electroencephalography (EEG) that will allow us to draw distinctions between the different components of agency —if they exist— at the neural level. Together, by unifying different approaches to the study of agency on the one hand, and by framing agency within the broader framework of metacognitive monitoring, this project may help explain the differences between the disparate results existing in the literature, and lay some theoretical grounds to move forwards in the field.

Elisa Filevich, PhD

Prof. Dr. Michael Pauen

Prof. Dr. York Winter

Prof. Dr. Dr. Andreas Heinz

Prof. Dr. Randolf Menzel

My research focuses on body image, body ownership, interoception and eating behaviours. While body image difficulties have been closely studied alongside disordered eating for a long time, they often do not receive enough attention in eating disorder treatments. This highlights a need for better interventions that can efficiently and pointedly target body image difficulties. The main aim of my project is to better understand body image disturbances and to investigate the interaction between body ownership and interoception, as it relates to eating behaviours. In my research I use virtual reality technology to investigate ways to reduce body image disturbances.

Prof. Dr. Soyoung Q Park

Prof. Dr. Radoslaw M. Cichy

Prof. Dr. Hauke Heekeren

Dr. Roland Benoit

Prof. Dr. Isabel Dziobek

Prof. Dr. Dr. Henrik Walter

For the longest time, economic and perceptual decisions have been studied from vastly different perspectives. Although, there has been growing interest in integrating both aspects of decision-making, the precise and mechanistic role of reward on perceptual decisions has been scarcely investigated and remains largely unclear.
In my PhD project, I use different neuroimaging techniques to investigate how reward affects the underlying mechanisms of perceptual decisions throughout different contexts and modalities. The applied task disentangles perceptual components from attentional effects on response selection, to find the response-independent influence of reward on perceptual decisions.

Prof. Dr. Felix Blankenburg

Prof. Dr. Radoslaw M. Cichy

Prof. Dr. Felix Blankenburg

Prof. Dr. Michael Pauen

Prof. Dr. Hauke Heekeren

Prof. Dr. Carsten Finke

Sense of agency is thought to arise from the successful integration of predicted and observed sensory outcomes of intentional action, including information from one’s own body and the environment. Relatedly, voluntary action initiation appears to be entrained by cardiorespiratory fluctuations, which may provide optimal, predictable windows for either action or perception. Nevertheless, whether and how this coupling between voluntary action and cardiorespiratory signals influences the emergence of a sense of agency is still unclear. Thus, the aim of my doctoral project is to investigate the behavioural relevance and neurophysiology of the link between cardiorespiratory signalling, voluntary action initiation and sense of agency, using behavioural measures and neuroimaging (mainly EEG).

Prof. Dr. Arno Villringer

Dr. Michael Gaebler

Prof. Dr. Patrick Haggard

Prof. Dr. Arno Villringer

Prof. Dr. Klaus-Robert Müller

Prof. Dr. Felix Blankenburg

Prof. Dr. Marcel Brass

Prof. Dr. Angela Friederici

Prof. Dr. Pia Knoeferle

Prof. Dr. John-Dylan Haynes

Prof. Dr. Hennig Sprekeler

Prof. Dr. Philipp Sterzer

Prof. Dr. Rasha Abdel Rahman

In my doctoral project, I am investigating the influence of sex hormones on the immune system, the stress response, and depression. Specifically, I will look at the impact of endogenous ovarian hormones, such as fluctuating estrogen and progesterone levels across the female menstrual cycle, and exogenous ovarian hormones, for example contained in oral contraceptives. My overarching aim is to improve females’ mental health by contributing to the understanding of sex hormones in health, but also in disease. In my doctoral project, I am investigating the influence of sex hormones on the immune system, the stress response, and depression. Specifically, I will look at the impact of endogenous ovarian hormones, such as fluctuating estrogen and progesterone levels across the female menstrual cycle, and exogenous ovarian hormones, for example contained in oral contraceptives. My overarching aim is to improve females’ mental health by contributing to the understanding of sex hormones in health, but also in disease.

Prof. Dr. Julia Sacher

Prof. Dr. Arno Villringer

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) unfolds its therapeutic potentials by modulating widespread pathological brain circuits, which are likely symptom- rather than disease-specific. Inspired by emerging transdiagnostic symptom conceptions, within my PhD, I strive to establish predictive models of structural (dMRI-derived) and functional (rsfMRI-derived) symptom network targets associated with beneficial or detrimental stimulation effects within the neuropsychiatric spectrum and across pathologies (e.g., in Parkinson’s disease or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). A resulting high-resolution, neurocircuit-derived taxonomy of DBS effects may be harnessed to personalize surgical targeting via unique blends of symptom networks weighted as a function of phenotypical profiling at the single-subject level.

Prof. Dr. Carsten Finke

Prof. Dr. Andrea Kühn

Dr. Andreas Horn

Prof. Dr. Martin Rolfs

Prof. Dr. Marianne Maertens

Prof. Dr. Michael Brecht

Prof. Dr. John-Dylan Haynes

Whenever we perform an action, this action is accompanied by the faint and elusive feeling of being the cause of an event in the outside world. This so-called sense of agency (SoA) is thought to strongly rely on the conscious decision for, as well as the voluntary control over the action. Interested in the role of volition and awareness in sense of agency, I want to examine whether these two components are necessary prerequisites for SoA or whether we can experience agency even in the absence of volitional control and action-awareness. In my PhD project, I plan to investigate this issue by means of very small fixational eye movements that are performed in the absence of voluntary control and awareness but nevertheless bear the potential to influence sense of agency.

Prof. Dr. Martin Rolfs

Elisa Filevich, PhD

Prof. Dr. Arno Villringer

Prof. Dr. Werner Sommer

Prof. Dr. Christine Heim

Prof. Dr. John-Dylan Haynes

Prof. Dr. Carsten Finke

Prof. Dr. Friedemann Paul

Prof. Dr. Radoslaw M. Cichy

Prof. Dr. Rafael Malach

Prof. Dr. Martin Rolfs

Prof. Dr. Radoslaw Cichy

Prof. Dr. Michael Pauen

Can you detect the presence of a cat faster if you a word or a sound? How similar to the cry of cat would the word have to be to help the most? The goal of the project is to use behavioural and brain imaging techniques to compare the processing of onomatopoeia by native and non-native speakers. Onomatopoeia are words which imitate the natural sound they refer to, for example “boom”, so they are particularly suited to test the grounded (or embodied) cognition theory which postulates the activation of our perceptuo-motor system during language processing. Such an activation will first be tested through a continuous flash suppression design (i.e., visual detection task while the target goes from fully invisible to progressively visible) for onomatopoeia, arbitrary words and natural sounds both by native and non-native speakers. The results will be informative on whether onomatopoeia facilitate non-linguistic cognition or not, with applications from art and entertainment (e.g., making virtual reality games or written works more immersive) to fundamental communication support (e.g., international inter-comprehension, foreign language learning, native (L1) and/or foreign language (L2) acquisition with a language and/or sensory disorder…).

Prof. Dr. Rasha Abdel Rahman

Prof. Dr. Martin Rolfs

We will investigate interindividual differences in the recovery from a psychosocial stressor (trier social stress test) in a sample of healthy individuals and healthy individuals at risk for developing psychopathology. We want to characterize an adaptive stress recovery both from a biological (including immune-, hormonal-, and physiological parameters) and behavioural perspective (including tasks relevant for psychiatric disorders) in order to contribute to a better understanding of what makes some people resilient during exposure to significant stressors and what makes others vulnerable.

Prof. Dr. Katja Wingenfeld

Prof. Dr. Dr. Henrik Walter

Prof. Dr. Carsten Finke

Prof. Dr. Christoph Ploner

Prof. Dr. Martin Rolfs

Prof. Dr. Carsten Finke

Prof. Dr. John-Dylan Haynes

Prof. Dr. Philipp Sterzer

Prof. Dr. John-Dylan Haynes

Prof. Dr. Ryszard Auksztulewicz

Prof. Dr. Felix Blankenburg

Prof. Dr. Martin Rolfs

Elisa Filevich, PhD

Prof. Dr. Philipp Sterzer

Prof. Dr. Gabriel Curio

Dr. Gunnar Waterstraat

Prof. Dr. Carsten Finke

Prof. Dr. Radoslaw M. Cichy

Prof. Dr. Christoph Möllers

Prof. Dr. Dr. Henrik Walter

Prof. Dr. Tade Spranger

Prof. Dr. Carsten Finke

Prof. Dr. Philipp Sterzer

My research investigates circadian rhythms and human decision-making. Specifically, I am interested in the relationship between food intake, circadian rhythms and cognition.

Prof. Dr. Soyoung Q Park

Prof. Dr. Michael Pauen

Prof. Dr. Carsten Finke

Prof. Dr. Christoph Ploner

Prof. Dr. Carsten Finke

Prof. Dr. Christoph Ploner

Understanding moral decision-making is a crucial component of social interaction. My doctoral thesis aims to explore moral decision-making by integrating behavioural and neurophysiological methods in borderline personality disorder (BPD), a group characterized by complex interpersonal dynamics. Using ERPs and initial assessments for emotional arousal, theory of mind, and inhibitory control, I aim to identify social cognition deficits in BPD. The study uses a dual method: cross-sectional comparison of BPD subjects and controls, and a longitudinal analysis of moral cognition changes before and after 12 weeks dialectical behaviour therapy. This novel approach could shed light on neurocognitive underpinnings of social functioning in BPD, considering psychophysiological nuances of the disorder.

Prof. Dr. Katja Wingenfeld

Prof. Dr. Arno Villringer

Prof. Dr. Marcel Brass

Prof. Dr. John-Dylan Haynes

Prof. Dr. Thomas Schmidt

Prof. Dr. Dr. Henrik Walter

Although lying is a fundamental element of human social communication, the underlying cognitive processes are mainly unknown. Therefore, the objective of this project is to investigate the verbalization processes of lying using behavioral and EEG measurements. Aiming to create an ecologically valid situation within the laboratory (or in an online context), the lies will be embedded in social contexts encouraging spontaneous lying. Guided by current models of deception and speech production research, I will investigate which cognitive processes are modulated when a lie is verbalized, how emotions influence the production processes, and whether the truth is lexically coactive during the production of a lie. Thereby, I hope to improve the understanding of natural (everyday) lies.

Prof. Dr. Rasha Abdel Rahman

Prof. Dr. Pia Knoeferle

As part of the brain, the eye might open a window to cognitive processing in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease (PD). My PhD aims to investigate cognitive processing in patients with PD by means of biomarkers such as eye-tracking and pupillometry. Building on the results of these physiological markers, a non-invasive treatment option using blue-enriched light stimulation is planned. By offering timing signals to restore the inner clock, my PhD aims to help improve cognitive impairment, a key symptom in PD.

Prof. Dr. Fabian Klostermann

Prof. Dr. Martin Rolfs

Prof. Dr. Andrea Kühn

Prof. Dr. Marcel Brass

Prof. Dr. Michael Pauen

My doctoral thesis delves into the current landscape of psychedelics, exploring predictive factors and their impact on fundamental beliefs and mental health outcomes. Specifically, I am conducting a meta-analysis and questionnaire directed at therapists to elucidate factors that may predict therapeutic response to psychedelic-assisted therapy. Additionally, I am involved in running a questionnaire-based project that explores the nexus between free will beliefs, psychedelic experiences and depression. Collectively, the projects aim to advance our understanding of the efficacy of psychedelic-assisted therapy, optimise patient screening processes and shed light on the interplay between philosophical convictions, psychedelic experiences and mental well-being

Prof. Dr. Dr. Henrik Walter

Dr. Felix Betzler

Prof. Dr. Andreas Ströhle

In Parkinsonian patients, Deep Brain Stimulation is a common treatment used to alleviate rigidity and bradykinetic symptoms. However, the stimulation can induce side effects, both at the motor and cognitive levels. These side effects could arise from the non-voluntary stimulation of fibre tracts from the response inhibition network, involved in motor suppression and impulsive behaviors regulation. By using directional DBS and neuroimaging, the aim of the project is to probe the influence of this network at the motor and cognitive levels.

Prof. Dr. Andrea Kühn

Prof. Dr. Fabian Klostermann

Dr. Roxanne Lofredi

My project aims to apply a neurocomputational approach to investigate whether experiential and observational learning differ in their effect on memory encoding and whether these differ across development. Participants will perform a task involving experiential and observational learning trials and will be subsequently tested on recognition memory of the visual stimuli used in the learning task. To check for possible memory differences behavioral performance and neural activity (EEG) will be analyzed and compared between experiential and observational learning as well as between adults and children. Further, computational modeling will be employed to investigate the underlying mechanisms of how both learning types affect memory encoding and if these differ across development.

Prof. Dr. Marcel Brass

Prof. Dr. Ben Eppinger