Ann-Christine Ehlis

• PhD
• Group Leader at University of Tübingen

Significance A shared understanding of terminology is essential for clear scientific communication and minimizing misconceptions. This is particularly challenging in rapidly expanding, interdisciplinary domains that utilize functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), where researchers come from diverse backgrounds and apply their expertise in fi...

Introduction Investigations on emotion regulation strategies (ERS) primarily focus on the influence of instructed emotion regulation (ER) on outcomes. However, recent work has shown that selection of ERS is dependent on, e.g., situational demands and personal resources. Methods In this current investigation, we used an online diary to investigate...

Introduction Cognitive control is a prerequisite for successful, goal-oriented behavior. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is assumed to be a key player in applying cognitive control; however, the neural mechanisms by which this process is accomplished are still unclear. Methods To further address this question, an audiovisual Stroop task...

The COVID‐19 pandemic has led to a global health crisis and a significant increase in psychological distress and psychopathological symptoms. We conducted a randomized controlled trial with two online interventions derived from positive psychology (PP) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) in N = 138 “homestayers” during the first lock‐down p...

In neuroimaging research, efforts to enhance replication and reproducibility have increased the focus on improving transparency, particularly in the complex data analysis processes. We conducted a multi-lab collaborative study involving 38 international teams that analyzed two functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) datasets. These teams test...

Hallucinations and perceptual abnormalities in psychosis are thought to arise from imbalanced integration of prior information and sensory inputs. We combined psychophysics, Bayesian modeling, and electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate potential changes in perceptual and causal inference in response to audiovisual flash-beep sequences in medic...

Hypnosis has been applied in healing procedures since the earliest of recorded history and today it is implemented in a wholesome concept Hypnotherapy (HT¹). On a neurophysiological level, hypnosis has been associated with parts of the Default Mode Network (DMN²), but its effects on this network when induced in a treatment setting of a widespread d...

Introduction This study explores the stability of scores on psychometrically validated trait questionnaires over time. We illustrate potential pitfalls through a larger study that used the Ruminative Response Scale (RRS) to categorize participants prior to study inclusion into two groups based on their habitual tendency to ruminate. Surprisingly, w...

Recent work showed an association of prefrontal dysfunctions in patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and social stress induced rumination. However, up to date it is unclear which etiological features of MDD might cause prefrontal dysfunctions. In the study at hand, we aimed to replicate recent findings, that showed prefrontal activation...

Cue exposure therapy (CET) in substance-use disorders aims to reduce craving and ultimately relapse rates. Applying CET in virtual reality (VR) was proposed to increase its efficacy, as VR enables the presentation of social and environmental cues along with substance-related stimuli. However, limited success has been reported so far when applying V...

Background: Cue exposure (CE) is used for relapse prevention as part of smoking cessation therapy to reduce the automatized response to smoking-related cues. Using CET in virtual reality (VR) is an approach to increase its efficacy by creating cost-efficient high-risk situations. The efficacy of VR-based CETs was compared to that of an unspecific r...

Previous studies suggest that theta burst stimulation (TBS), a form of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), applied to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) might be a promising approach to modulate stress-reactive rumination and the associated psychophysiological stress response. Crucially, individuals showing higher leve...

Humans spontaneously take the perspective of others when encoding spatial information in a scene, especially with agentive action cues present. This functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) study explored how action observation influences implicit spatial perspective-taking (SPT) by adapting a left–right spatial judgment task to investigate wh...

Background Binge-eating disorder (BED) co-occurs with neurobehavioral alterations in the processing of disorder-relevant content such as visual food stimuli. Whether neurofeedback (NF) directly targeting them is suited for treatment remains unclear. This study sought to determine feasibility and estimate effects of individualized, functional near-i...

Repetitive negative thinking (RNT), including rumination, plays a key role in various psychopathologies. Although several psychotherapeutic treatments have been developed to reduce RNT, the neural correlates of those specific treatments and of psychotherapy in general are largely unknown. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) offers the pot...

Previous studies have consistently shown a pattern of prefrontal hypoactivation in depressed patients (DP); however, it remains unclear whether this neural correlate is a consequence or concomitant feature of depression and/or whether ruminative thinking might be underlying. Using a sample comprising 65 healthy controls (HC) and 77 DP, we investiga...

Hallucinations and perceptual abnormalities in psychosis are thought to arise from imbalanced integration of prior information and sensory inputs during perceptual inference. In this study, we combined psychophysics, Bayesian modelling and electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate potential changes in perceptual and causal inference in medicated...

Zusammenfassung: Zielsetzung: Die „Cue-Exposure“-Therapie (CET) ist eine Intervention, die zur Rückfallprävention bei Substanzgebrauchsstörungen genutzt wird, um zu lernen, die automatisierte Reaktion auf suchtrelevante Reize (Cue-Reaktivität) zu habituieren. Die Effektivität der CET ist moderat; Gründe dafür und Möglichkeiten, diese in der virtuel...

Background. Cue-reactivity as a characteristic symptom of substance use disorders (SUD) is highly context dependent. Paradigms with high context validity need to be established for the investigation of underlying neurobiological mechanisms. While craving can be assessed by self-report as one aspect of cue-reactivity (CR), the assessment of biologic...

Overweight with and without comorbid binge-eating disorder (BED) has been associated with increased reward sensitivity, though evidence is heterogeneous. To disentangle this heterogeneity and gain insights into mechanisms of impaired reward processing, this study applied multi-method neuro-behavioural techniques. Reward sensitivity was investigated...

Objective: Addictive behavior is characterized by fast automatic responses to drug-related cues (termed cue reactivity) and deficient cognitive control. The ability to detect errors is a prerequisite for an adaptive increase of cognitive control to prevent further errors. In the current study, cue-reactivity effects on cognitive control were asses...

The present post-hoc analysis of two independent studies conducted in different laboratories aimed at comparing reactions of stress activation systems in response to two different psychosocial stress induction paradigms. Both paradigms are based on the Trier Social Stress Test and suited for neuroimaging environments. In an in-depth analysis, data...

Changes in functional brain organization are considered to be particularly sensitive to age-related effects and may precede structural cognitive decline. Recent research focuses on aging processes determined by resting state (RS) functional connectivity (FC), but little is known about differences in FC during RS and cognitive task conditions in eld...

Background In order to investigate the relationship between stress-reactive rumination and the implementation of different emotion-regulation strategies (ERS), the pilot study at hand assessed ecological momentary assessment data twice per day from currently depressed patients (n = 21) and healthy controls (n = 23). Methods We analyzed differences...

Hypnotherapy (HT) is a promising approach to treating depression, but so far, no data are available on the neuronal mechanisms of functional reorganization after HT for depressed patients. Here, 75 patients with mild to moderate depression, who received either HT or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), were measured before and after therapy using fu...

While arithmetic training reduces fronto-temporo-parietal activation related to domain-general processes in typically developing (TD) children, we know very little about the training-related neurocognitive changes in children with mathematical disabilities (MD), who seek evidenced-based educational interventions. In a within-participant design, a g...

We aimed to investigate stress-reactive rumination in response to social stress and its association with social anxiety and trait rumination. From previous investigations we know that people with a certain vulnerability to rumination show increased stress-reactive rumination. However, up to date the possible influence of social anxiety on this rela...

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) provides reliable results for determining cognitive load based on averaged cortical blood flow during multiple repetitions of short cognitive tasks. At the same time, it remains unclear how to use this technique for assessing cognitive load during prolonged single-trial activity. In this study, we used...

There is increasing evidence that learning of manual tasks from dynamic visualizations (e.g., origami folding) is facilitated when human hands are shown or gestures can be observed in the visualizations. This study examined whether observing and making gestures improves learning about non-human biological movements (i.e., fish locomotion) and wheth...

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) are a characteristic symptom of psychosis. An influential cognitive model accounting for the mechanisms in the generation of AVHs describes a defective monitoring of inner speech, leading to the misidentification of internally generated thoughts as externally generated events. In this study, we utilized an inner...

The cell–cell signaling gene CDH13 is associated with a wide spectrum of neuropsychiatric disorders, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, and major depression. CDH13 regulates axonal outgrowth and synapse formation, substantiating its relevance for neurodevelopmental processes. Several studies support the influence of...

We aimed to investigate the stress-reactive rumination response to social stress and its association with social anxiety and trait rumination. From previous investigations we know that people with a certain vulnerability to rumination show increased stress-reactive rumination. However, up to date the possible influence of social anxiety to this rel...

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a childhood onset disorder persisting into adulthood for a large proportion of cases. Neurofeedback (NF) has shown promising results in children with ADHD, but randomized controlled trials in adults with ADHD are scarce. We aimed to compare slow cortical potential (SCP)- and functional near-infrare...

Successful emotion regulation plays a key role in psychological health and well-being. This study examines (1) whether cognitive control and corresponding neural connectivity are associated with emotion regulation and (2) to what extent external instructions can improve emotion regulation in individuals with low vs. high cognitive control capacity....

Mind-body exercises such as Yoga or Qi Gong have demonstrated a wide range of health benefits and hold great promise for employment in clinical practice. However, the psychophysiological mechanism underlying these effects remains unclear. Theoretical frameworks highlight regulation as a characteristic and specific mechanism of mind-body exercise fo...

In our world with nearly omnipresent availability of attractive and palatable high-calorie food, the struggle against overweight and obesity is a major individual and public health challenge. Preference for unhealthy food and eating-related habits have a strong influence on health, suggesting that high-calorie food triggers fast and near-automatic...

Recent research has emphasized rumination as an important maintaining factor in various mental disorders. However, operationalization and therefore induction of rumination in experimental settings poses a major challenge in terms of ecological validity. As stress seems to play a key role in everyday situations eliciting rumination, we conducted two...

Background Behavioral and cognitive control are vital for healthy eating behavior. Patients with binge eating disorder (BED) suffer under recurrent binge eating episodes accompanied by subjective loss of control that results, among other factors, from increased impulsivity. Methods In the current study, we investigated the frontal network using fu...

Parkinson's Disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder leading to typical motor as well as a range of non-motor symptoms, including cognitive decline mainly characterized by executive deficits. The latter are known to appear years before the typical motor signs, thus representing the prodromal phase of PD. However, appropriate methods for measuri...

Background: Cognitive control is thought to be necessary for forgiveness processes. Materials and Methods: To examine this correlation, highly impulsive participants, who often fail to inhibit feelings of revenge, received activating theta burst stimulation (TBS) of a classical cognitive control region of the brain, the right dorsolateral prefronta...

In our aging society, research into neurodegenerative processes is of great interest. Thereby, cortical activation under different neurocognitive conditions is considered to be a promising predictor. Against this background, the executive functions of a total of 250 healthy older adults (53–84 years) have been investigated using the Trail Making Te...

Higher impulsivity may arise from neurophysiological deficits of cognitive control in the prefrontal cortex. Cognitive control can be assessed by time-frequency decompositions of electrophysiological data. We aimed to clarify neuroelectric mechanisms of performance monitoring in connection with impulsiveness during a modified Eriksen flanker task i...

Previous research repeatedly found basic numerical abilities (e.g., magnitude understanding, arithmetic fact knowledge, etc.) to predict young students' current and later arithmetic achievement as assessed by achievement tests – even when controlling for the influence of domain-general abilities (e.g., intelligence, working memory). However, to the...

Obesity (OB) and associated binge-eating disorder (BED) show increased impulsivity and emotional dysregulation. Albeit well-established in neuropsychiatric research, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has rarely been used to study OB and BED. Here, we investigated fNIRS-based food-specific brain signalling, its association with impulsivi...

In the current study, we investigated the amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (ALFF) at rest and during a rumination induction. Specifically, we explored the differences of cortical blood oxygenation using fNIRS in subjects with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and healthy controls (HC). Rumination was assessed as state and trait measure, as wel...

These authors contributed equally to this work. All other authors are listed in reverse alphabetical order. Neurofeedback has begun to attract the attention and scrutiny of the scientific and medical mainstream. Here, neurofeedback researchers present a consensus-derived checklist that aims to improve the reporting and experimental design standards...

Depressive rumination is considered a prominent risk factor for the occurrence, severity, and duration of depressive episodes. A variety of treatment options have been developed to treat depressive rumination of which mindfulness based programs are especially promising. In the current study, we investigated the neural underpinnings of a short mindf...

Subjective tinnitus is the conscious perception of sound in the absence of any acoustic source. The literature suggests various tinnitus mechanisms, most of which invoke changes in spontaneous firing rates of central auditory neurons resulting from modification of neural gain. Here, we present an alternative model based on evidence that tinnitus is...

Children with developmental dyscalculia (DD) differ from typically developing (TD) children regarding brain activation. While arithmetic training reduces fronto-temporo-parietal activation related to domain-general processes in TD children, we do not know whether these findings also hold for children with DD. Since children with DD are one main tar...

Specific phobia is associated with aberrant brain activation in confrontation paradigms with phobic stimuli. In previous EEG research enhanced event-related potentials (ERPs) in the late-positive potential (LPP) window have been observed. Further, studies with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and fMRI suggest that spider phobia is asso...

Children with attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show deficient reading skills, which, like ADHD symptoms, are associated with limitations in neurocognitive abilities. Neurofeedback (NF) aims to improve the latter, to alleviate ADHD symptoms, and to promote school and reading performances. Whether frontal lobe-NF based on functional...

Neurofeedback (NF), a training tool aimed at enhancing neural self-regulation, has been suggested as a complementary treatment option for neuropsychiatric disorders. Despite its potential as a neurobiological intervention directly targeting neural alterations underlying clinical symptoms, the efficacy of NF for the treatment of mental disorders has...

Neurofeedback has begun to attract the attention and scrutiny of the scientific and medical mainstream. Here, neurofeedback researchers present a consensus-derived checklist that aims to improve the reporting and experimental design standards in the field.

A flexible and dynamically adjustable behavior is crucial to adapt to a continuously changing environment. In order to optimally adapt, we need to learn from the consequences of our behavior. We usually learn through different kinds of prediction errors, which occur when we experience unexpected situations due to false predictions. With this litera...

Objectives : The emotional Stroop effect is defined as increased reaction times to emotional stimuli compared to neutral ones. It has been often reported in the literature, on both behavioral and neurophysiological level. The goal was to investigate the frontal brain activation in individuals at risk for schizophrenic psychosis and bipolar disorder...

Exposure therapy is a well-studied and highly efficacious treatment for phobic disorders. Although the neurobiological model of fear is well underpinned by various studies, the mechanisms of exposure therapy are still under discussion. Partly, this is due to the fact that most neurophysiological methods like fMRI are not able to be used in the natu...

Transforming the barrage of sensory signals into a coherent multisensory percept relies on solving the binding problem – deciding whether signals come from a common cause and should be integrated or, instead, segregated. Human observers typically arbitrate between integration and segregation consistent with Bayesian Causal Inference, but the neural...

It is under debate whether the neural representation of numbers and letters might rely on distinct neural correlates, or on a mostly shared neural network. In the present study, a total of 47 children in fifth grade (Experiment 1) and sixth grade (Experiment 2) simply copied numbers and letters on a touch screen while brain activation changes were...

The ability to reconcile is a key factor for a cooperative and successful life. Among the many factors that have an impact on how people negotiate social contracts, poor cognitive control (which is inversely linked to impulsivity) may exert negative effects on forgiveness. To investigate the neurobiological basis of this proposition, subjects with...

Attention biases towards threat signals have been linked to the etiology and symptomatology of social anxiety disorder (SAD). Dysfunction of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) may contribute to attention biases in anxious individuals. The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) neurofeedback...

Some individuals experience more difficulties with math than others, in particular when arithmetic problems get more complex. Math ability, on one hand, and arithmetic complexity, on the other hand, seem to partly share neural underpinnings. This study addresses the question of whether this leads to an interaction of math ability and arithmetic com...

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Gegenstand und Ziel: Obwohl stress- und angstbedingte Störungen weit verbreitet sind, ist die Wirksamkeit entsprechender therapeutischer Maßnahmen nicht optimal. In jüngster Zeit wurde in einer Reihe von Studien der zusätzliche Nutzen einer nicht invasiven Hirnstimulation (NIBS) bei der Psychotherapie von Angsterkrankungen untersuch...

KCNJ6, encoding a potassium channel subunit, regulates the excitability of dopaminergic neurons and is expressed in attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)‐relevant brain regions. As a potential ADHD risk gene, KCNJ6, therefore, may contribute to the endophenotypic variation of the disorder. The impact of two SNPs, rs7275707 and rs6517442,...

Background Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neuropsychiatric disorder which is characterized by symptoms of inattention with or without hyperactivity as well as impulsivity. Neurofeedback is a complementary neurobehavioral treatment option in multimodal treatment approaches that aims at directly normalizing the neurophysiologica...

Background There is a need for alternative treatment approaches for patients with a schizophrenic disorder and verbal acoustic hallucinations (AVH), which are resistant to conventional treatment options, such as antipsychotic medication. Objective The approach in the development of a neurofeedback (NF) training as an alternative treatment option i...

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neuropsychiatric disorder normally diagnosed in childhood and persisting into adulthood in up to two-thirds of the patients. Its core symptoms comprise inattention and hyperactive–impulsive behaviours. Several studies suggest that patients with ADHD show alterations in self-regulation and self-mo...

Most studies have investigated brain activation changes after the course of arithmetic learning, and the question remains whether these changes are detectable during the course of learning, i.e., before memory consolidation. Twenty-four fifth graders solved multiplication problems while ongoing electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. The arithme...

Math anxiety impairs academic achievements in mathematics. According to the processing efficiency theory (PET), the adverse effect is the result of reduced processing capacity in working memory (WM). However, this relationship has been examined mostly with correlational designs. Therefore, using an intervention paradigm, we examined the effects of...

This checklist is intended to encourage robust experimental design and clear reporting for clinical and cognitive-behavioural neurofeedback experiments.

This checklist is intended to encourage robust experimental design and clear reporting for clinical and cognitive-behavioural neurofeedback experiments. Available at https://psyarxiv.com/nyx84

The World Health Organization has defined health as “complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (World Health Organization, 1948). An increasing number of studies have therefore started to investigate “the good life.” However, the underlying variation in brain activity has rarely been examine...

Transforming the barrage of sensory signals into a coherent multisensory percept relies on solving the binding problem - deciding whether signals come from a common cause and should be integrated, or instead be segregated. Human observers typically arbitrate between integration and segregation consistent with Bayesian Causal Inference, but the neur...

The use of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in block designs provides measures of cortical activity in ecologically valid environments. However, in some cases, the use of block designs may be problematic when data are not corrected for performance in a time-restricted block. We sought to investigate the effects of task complexity and p...

Background Arithmetic processing in adults is known to rely on a frontal-parietal network. However, neurocognitive research focusing on the neural and behavioral correlates of arithmetic development has been scarce, even though the acquisition of arithmetic skills is accompanied by changes within the fronto-parietal network of the developing brain....

Background: Recently, research into attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has focused increasingly on its neurobiological underpinnings, revealing (among other things) frontal lobe alterations. Specifically, action-monitoring deficits have been described, including impaired behavioural adjustments following errors. Our aim was to examine...

This study investigated whether students in grades 5 and 6 learned better when seated proximally to the teacher during a virtual classroom math lesson, taking individual levels of inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity (i.e., ADHD symptoms) into account. In general, students learned better in the proximal seat location compared to a distant one....

Rumination is a perseverative thinking style that is associated with adverse mental and physical health. Stressful situations have been considered as a trigger for this kind of thinking. Until today, there are mixed findings with respect to the relations of functional connectivity (FC) and rumination. The study at hand aimed to investigate, in how...

This paper presents a novel approach for automatic prediction of risk of ADHD in schoolchildren based on touch interaction data. We performed a study with 129 fourth-grade students solving math problems on a multiple-choice interface to obtain a large dataset of touch trajectories. Using Support Vector Machines, we analyzed the predictive power of...