News & Links
NoCo-Lab News
September 2023
Sonja's paper on "Cross-hemispheric recruitment during action planning with increasing task demand" just surfaced at Scientific Reports [pub], congratulations! Sonja continued earlier work of Melanie Höller-Wallscheid [pub], who demonstrated that whenever we get close to our working memory capacity, otherwise lateralized prefrontal brain processes for working memory maintenance turn bilateral. Sonja now extended these findings by showing that such a cross-hemispheric recruitment is present also in areas beyond prefrontal cortex and during other cognitive tasks, namely during action planning. This suggests that cross-hemispheric recruitment could serve as a general mechanism of the brain to provide aditional processing power whenever we reach our cognitive capacity limits.
May 2023
Checkout our new paper in PNAS: "Impaired perception of temporal contiguity between action and effect is associated with disorders of agency in schizophrenia" by Manuel Roth, Axel Lindner, Klaus Hesse, Dirk Wildgruber, Hong Yu Wong and Marc Buehner [pub]. Our study focuses on Schizophrenia patients exhibtining so-called delusions of control. During such delusions patients experience that external forces are causing their own thoughts and actions. Being inspired by Bayesian causal inference models, our study now shows that such explicit misconceptions of causal relationships in patients with delusions of control are paralleled by disturbed perceptions of temporal contiguity between actions and their consequences. Our study highlights the value of Bayesian accounts to explain psychosis. More specifically, it depicts how such accounts could be used in the future to quantitatively assess and possibly predict delusions of control in schizophrenia. Congratulations to Manuel and to all co-authors for making this great project possible!
March 2023
Check out our new chapter on "Visual Circuits" in the cerebellum by Manuel Roth, Axel Lindner and Peter Thier [pub]. Our review was just published in the 2nd edition of the Springer textbook on "Essentials of Cerebellum and Cerebellar Disorders - A Primer For Graduate Students".
November 2022
Lorena submitted her Master thesis on "Action Inhibition: The change of planned motor control regarding to penalty and reward system". Congratulations, Lorena! Lorena's work built on the assumption that action planning reflects a competition of alternative action plans, also referred to as the “affordance competition hypothesis”. Crucially, her work extends this hypothesis by demonstrating that (some of) these alternative plans could also be inhibitory in nature.
October 2022
Checkout our new paper in PLOS Comp bioRxiv: "Bounded rational decision-making models suggest capacity-limited concurrent motor planning in human posterior parietal and frontal cortex" by Sonja Schach, Axel Lindner & Daniel A. Braun [pub]. When the future is uncertain, it can be beneficial to concurrently plan several action possibilities in advance. Electrophysiological research found evidence in monkeys that brain regions in posterior parietal and promotor cortex are capable of maintaining several action plans in parallel. Using fMRI in combination with bounded rationality models that optimally assign information resources to fMRI activity we find that concurrent prospective planning explained posterior parietal and premotor activity significantly better than assuming alternative memory-based strategies. The model further allowed us to quantify the individual capacity limit for concurrent planning and to relate these individual limits to both subjects’ behavior and to their neural representations of planning.
Lena Stöckl just submitted her Bachelor thesis on "Movement Amplitude vs. Movement Direction: Improving Self-Action Perception in the Inferior Dimension through a Vibrotactile Cue". Great work, Lena! Using our VR-Reach Setup, Lena describes significant differences in the reliability and accuracy of self-action perception with respect to the perceived direction vs. the perceived amplitude of subjects' pointing movements. Using an Arduino-controlled vibration motor, she further introduced a vibrotactile distance-cue that significantly improved self-action perception in the inferior dimension of amplitude.
Eva Vennemann submitted her Master Thesis on “Metacognition in Agency - How sure are you that a movement is actually yours?”. Congratulations, Eva! Eva implemented new methods to estimate subjects’ certainty in agency judgements while subjects were performing pointing movements with rotated visual movement-feedback in our VR-Reach Setup. She demonstrated the robustness of these methods, also by successfully relating them to inter-individual differences in the reliability and accuracy of self-action perception. Ultimately, combining our overall tools shall help us better relate disorders of agency in neuropsychiatric disease to different levels of (sensorimotor vs. metacognitive) processing.
September 2022
Leonie Behle submitted her Bachelor thesis on "Sensory attenuation vs. subjective agency for auditory action outcomes". Congratulations, Leonie! Our study is part of a collaborative project with Elisabeth Lindner and Prof. Dr. Alexander Gail from the German Primate Center in Göttingen, Germany. It is the first EEG study of the NOCO-lab and our first work on another reflection of agency-processing by the nervous system, namely sensory attenuation. Leonie's work provides us with first important insights into sensory attenuation on both an electrophysiological and a perceptual level and allows to relate these measures to explicit agency judgements.
August 2022
Check our latest preprint by Karnath, Rosenzopf, Smaczny and Lindner, which suggests that "Spatial neglect after stroke is reduced when lying inside a 3T MRI scanner" [pub]. Our case study makes use of the fact that the static magnetic field inside MRI-scanners induces a tonic magnetic-vestibular stimulation (MVS). MVS thereby not only leads to a vestibulo-ocular reflex but also to a horizontal bias in goal directed spatial behavior, as we have shown in our earlier work published in eLife ("Lying in a 3T MRI Scanner Induces Neglect-Like Spatial Attention Bias" [pub]). We now show that MVS can be used to ameliorate spatial neglect after stroke.
Nina Röhm just submitted her Master Thesis on "Boosting Working Memory in Cognitive Aging:The Bilateral Field Advantage in visual verbal Working Memory". Congratulations, Nina! Building on promising results from Teresa Kohler's MD project, who confirmed a bilateral field advantage for spatial working memory maintenance in young and old adults, Nina tested whether a comparable benefit could be found for verbal memory maintenance.
Juni 2022
Erola Pons received a PhD-stipend from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes for her project proposal on "The detached self: Comparing depersonalization / derealization-like experiences arising in meditation vs. other contexts". Compliments to Erola for all the efforts that went into this ambitious and idealistic proposal, which finally got rewarded!
May 2022
Sarah Trillsam just submitted her Master Thesis on "Group or Element? Neural Correlates of the Ternus Illusion". Great work, Sarah! Sarah's thesis completes a preliminary fMRI study of Katrin Kutscheid, which our lab performed in collaboration with Dr. Elisabeth Hein from the Department of Psychology at the University of Tübingen: Using a bistable version of the Ternus Illusion in combination with fMRI, Sarah provides conclusive evidence that parieto-occipital cortex serves as a substrate for spatial grouping (also compare Kutscheid et al., 2014).
March 2022
Kreshnik Bickaj was awarded a stipend from the Promotionskolleg of the medical faculty of the University of Tübingen - congratulations, Kreshnik!His MD project is about "Decoding Working Memory - Wie die neuronale Repräsentation von Elementen im Arbeitsgedächtnis mit deren künftigen Nutzung zusammenhängt". The idea is to show that the future use of information in working memory (i.e. for either a verbal or a finger response) determines the way the same information is maintained. Kreshnik's work extends our earlier research with Art Pilacinski (2020), who recently provided preliminary evidence for this notion.
January 2022
Check our revised working paper on planning overload at bioRxiv: "Bounded rational decision-making models suggest capacity-limited concurrent motor planning in human posterior parietal and frontal cortex" by Sonja Schach, Axel Lindner & Daniel A. Braun [pub].
September 2021
Our new paper "Lying in a 3T MRI Scanner Induces Neglect-Like Spatial Attention Bias" by Axel Lindner, Daniel Wiesen and Hans-Otto Karnath was just published in eLife. We demonstrate in this paper that exposure of subjects to the magnetic field of an MRI scanner stimulates the vestibular organ and thereby induces a horizontal bias of spatial orienting and exploration similar to that seen in stroke patients with spatial neglect. [pub] [German press release]
June 2021
Check our latest preprint at bioRxiv: "Lying in a 3T MRI Scanner Induces Neglect-Like Spatial Attention Bias" by Axel Lindner, Daniel Wiesen and Hans-Otto Karnath. We show that putting a subject in a 3T MRI-scanner induces a bias of spatial attention, which closely mimics that of stroke patients with spatial neglect [pub].
Erola Pons presents a poster on "The Sense of Self in Depresonalization & Meditation" at the Psychologie & Gehirn 2021 meeting in Tübingen.
February 2021
Teresa Kohler was awarded a "Promotionskolleg" stipend by the medical faculty of our University. Congratulations, Teresa! Her project is called "Neue Strategien zur Verbesserung des Arbeitsgedächtnisses bei Demenz - Wie das Wechselspiel der Gehirnhemisphären das Arbeitsgedächtnis verbessert". For further information (in English) also see our News for December 2020.
December 2020
After completing her TÜ-Rex project in our lab, Teresa Kohler will continue working with us :-). For her MD thesis Teresa will probe new strategies to improve working memory function in early dementia. Her thesis is inspired by earlier fMRI-work of our lab on cognitive aging by Melanie Höller-Wallscheid [pub].
Erola Pons submitted her master thesis on "The Sense of Self in Meditation and Depersonalization: Establishing an Experimental Framework in healthy participants". Thanks for developing this exciting topic in our lab: we are looking forward to you continuing this research project in patients and meditators!
Karla Lauer sucessfully defended her MD thesis on "Die Rolle des parietalen Kortex bei der Wahrnehmung der eigenen Bewegungen". Congratulations from all of us Karla, cheers :-) !!
November 2020
Ann Tank will present "The role of mental effort in decision making based on accounting information – Evidence from an fMRI-experiment" at the (Virtual) Economics Seminar at Nijmegen School of Management on November 9th. This work is a collaboration between the NoCo-Lab and Ann Tank & Burkhard Pedell from the Chair of Management Accounting and Control at the University of Stuttgart, Germany.
September 2020
Didem Ergül submitted her master thesis on ''A pupillometry study: measuring and manipulating cognitive load to maximize working memory". Congratulations, Didem, for realizing this very exciting experimental project in difficult times :) !! In brief, Didem shows that puil-size well reflects cognitive load during visual working memory tasks performed in an everday-life-like setting.
August 2020
Check out our latest paper on working memory: Does it make a difference if we remember an address to tell it a friend on the phone or, alternatively, to note it down on a piece of paper? Research of Artur Pilacinski, Melanie Höller-Wallscheid and Axel Lindner suggests yes, it does! In our recent publication ‘Remember how to use it: effector-dependent modulation of spatial working memory activity in posterior parietal cortex’ in PLOS One we show by means of fMRI that the cortical maintenance of visual material in WM depends on motor context. Our results suggest that memory storage is optimized for the type of action that the memorized material will be momentarily used for. Congratulations to Art & Melly for this inspiring study! [pub].
Erola Pons will present her research at the European Summer Research Institute (ESRI 2020) - Knowledge: How do we perceive? How do we know what we know? Her poster is entiteled ''The sense of Self in Meditation & Depersonalization". The poster also includes beautiful illustrations by Tora Gargallo (see examples on the right). Thank you so much, Tora!
July 2020
Bernadette Kaess joined the lab for studying alterations of agency attribution in stroke patients. Her doctoral project will be performed in tight collaboration with the Division of Neuropsychology. Welcome Bernadette!
March 2020
Didem Ergül joined the lab for 'assessing cognitive load using pupillometry'. Her project will also be highly relevant for our projects on decision making as a function of cognitive load. Welcome Didem!
February 2020
Axel Lindner is becoming a new part-time meber of Hans-Otto Karnath's laboratory at the Hertie-Institute, the Division of Neuropsychology. This will allow for new exciting collaborative reserach projects between our labs.
Erola Pons joined the lab for studying 'The senses of bodily ownership and agency in Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder and in Meditation'. Both people who suffer from depersonalization as well as some meditators who have experience transformative insights, report feelings of being an outside observer with respect to one's thoughts, feelings, sensations, body, or actions. Erola's aim is to find empirical evidence for the similarities and differences between both cases. In order to achieve this, she will start assessing their sense of body ownership and agency. Welcome Erola!
January 2020
Axel Lindner presents at the University of Regensburg (Host: Prof. Dr. Angelika Lingnau; 27.1.2020): Agency - On the planning and self-attribution of action.
December 2019
Axel Lindner presents an elevator pitch on 'Sustainable Neural Processing' at the Tübingen Neuroscience Campus (TNC).
February 2019
Artur Pilacinski's manuscript on 'Distinct contributions of human posterior parietal and dorsal premotor cortex to reach trajectory planning' has been published in Scientific Reports - Congratulations, Art! [pub]. Artur shows that detailed trajectory plans are represented in the brain even before a movement is being performed. Posterior parietal cortex thereby seemingly encodes the most direct "way to the goal", whereas premotor cortex enables more complex reach trajectory plans. The latter type of reach planning is particularly relevant, for instance, when we need to avoid obstacles (compare our illustration) or whenever we want to communicate our 'inner visual world' through drawing, etc.
Felicia Membarth has been awarded a stipend of the IZKF-Promotionskolleg - congratulations, Felicia :-)
November 2018
Artur Pilacinski successfully defended his PhD thesis on ‚Enabling the future. Prospective action representations in the human parieto-frontal motor planning system‘. Congratulations Art! (26.11.2018, 13:00)
FOCUS (#47, 2018), the German News Magazine, presents our research on choice overload in their title story on decision making. [German news article]
Poster Presentation at the "2. Tag für Wirtschaftspsychologie: #digitalhuman – Potenziale, Risiken und Visionen", Hochschule für Technik, Stuttgart (9.11.2018). Axel Lindner on "Gehirngerechte Digitalisierung - Wie viel Information will unser Gehirn bewältigen ?" [link to conference page]
October 2018
Check our Dispatch in Current Biology on 'Motor Control: Parietal Stimulation Prevents Voluntary Hand Movement'. [pub]
Presentation at the Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus 'Primate Cognition', Göttingen (23.10.2018; 14.15). Axel Lindner on "A Disorder of Agency: The Causal Attribution of Sensory Events to One’s Actions and Its Impairment in Schizophrenia" [link]
Melanie Höller-Wallscheid successfully defended her PhD thesis on ‚how the brains of young and old human adults cope with increased working memory demands‘. Congratulations Melly! (15.10.2018, 11:00)
Artur's paper on prospective action planning has been published in PLoS ONE - congratulations! Human posterior parietal and dorsal premotor cortex encode the visual properties of an upcoming action (by Artur Pilacinski, Melanie S. Höller-Wallscheid and Axel Lindner). [check it out]
Our paper on the neural basis of choice overload has been published in Nature Human Behaviour:
Choice overload reduces neural signatures of choice set value in dorsal striatum and anterior cingulate cortex (by Elena Reutskaja, Axel Lindner, Rosemarie Nagel, Richard A. Andersen and Colin F. Camerer).[check it out] [press release (German)] [video explanation (English)] [news article: inverse.com (English)] [news article: in Schwäbisches Tagblatt (German)] [news article: Süddeutsche Zeitung (German)] [radio: MDR WISSEN (German)] [tv: Landesschau BW (German)] [news article: Forbes.com (english)].
July 2018
Presentation at the 'Virtual Environments: Current TOpics in psychological Research (VECTOR) workshop 2018' at the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien, Tübingen (25.-27.7.2018). Axel Lindner: Was it me? Paradigms for Studying Agency and its Disturbance in Neuropsychiatric Disease using Simple Virtual Reality Techniques [link]
June 2018
Presentation in the 'Colloquium Cognitive Systems' at Ulm University (7.6.2018, 17:15). Axel Lindner: The planning and attribution of action: From the agony of choice to disorders of agency in Schizophrenia [link]
Presentation at the Sixth International Conference of the Journal of International Accounting Research (JIAR) in Venice, Italy (28.-30.6.2018). Ann Tank, Axel Lindner, Burkhard Pedell: The effect of data density in KPI-based decision making: Evidence from an fMRI-experiment. [link to conference page]
October 2017
Barbara Wirxel successfully defended her PhD thesis on ‚Human Time Perception - Predictable visual stimuli are perceived earlier than unpredictable events ‘. Congratulations Barbara! (30.10.2017, 15:00)
Keynote Lecture at 6. Businesswochen in Böblingen (27.10.2017, 19:30): Ann Tank & Axel Lindner on "Fit für die kognitive Belastung in der digitalen Welt? Wie unser Gehirn mit zunehmender Informationsflut umgeht" [link]
September 2017
Symposium Presentation at the the 20. European Society for Cognitive Psychology Meeting in Potsdam (3.-6.9.2017)
Manuel Roth, et al.: Disorders of Agency in Schizophrenia (Monday 4.9.2017: 3.20pm) [link to conference page]. Symposium on "Exploring the Sense of Agency from Sensorimotor Processes to Joint Action: A Hierarchical Perspective". Organized by Nura Sidarus & Frederike Beyer.
Poster Presentation at the Bernstein Conference in Göttingen (13.-15.9.2017)
Artur Pilacinski & Axel Lindner: Distinct representations of planned reach trajectories in human premotor and posterior parietal cortex (Thursday 14.9.2017: 12.15-3.30pm) [link to conference page]
TISS 2017 - Tübingen International Summer School (24.-27.9.2017)
Neural Prosthetics: From Restoration to Enhancement of Biological Systems? Perspectives from Science, Ethics and Philosophy [link to summerschool page]
April 2017
Symposium Presentation at the Experimental Psychology Society Meeting in Belfast (10.-12.4.2017)
Axel Lindner: The causal attribution of sensory events to one’s own actions and its impairment in Schizophrenia (Monday 10.4.2017: 4pm) [PDF of conference program]. Symposium on "Time & Causality", Organized by Marc Buehner.
Februar 2017
"Expertenvortrag" - FC think! tank der Daimler AG (16.2.2017). Ann Tank und Axel Lindner.
January 2017
Invited talk at the Institute of Psychology of the University of Würzburg (23.1.2017)
Axel Lindner: The causal attribution of sensory events to one's own actions and its impairment in Schizophrenia (6pm) [link]
Our Reserach on Cognitive Aging has been published - congratulations, Melly!
Bilateral recruitment of prefrontal cortex in working memory is associated with task demand but not with age
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 114, 5: E830-E839. [pub]
One principle of human cerebral cortex is its lateralized functional architecture supporting processes such as language, precise motor control of the hands, and working memory. It has been shown that in elderly subjects such lateralized activations of dorsolateral and anterior prefrontal cortex vanish in working memory tasks, which is due to the corecruitment of corresponding regions in the other cerebral hemisphere. We show that such corecruitment of cross-hemispheric counterparts in prefrontal cortex is associated with subjectively demanding working memory tasks but not with age. This result suggests that prefrontal areas support us to maintain performance in challenging circumstances by additionally recruiting their non-specialized counterpart in the contralateral hemisphere. [press release]
NoCo-Lab PI: PD Dr. Axel Lindner. University Hospital Tübingen, Dept. Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Calwerstraße 14, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.