Ben Godde

• PhD
• Professor of Neuroscience at Constructor University Bremen

The pure exposure to extensive tactile stimulation, without the requirement of attention or active training, has been revealed to enhance sensorimotor functioning presumably due to an induction of plasticity in the somatosensory cortex. The induced effects, including increased tactile acuity and manual dexterity have repeatedly been observed in bas...

Repetitive tactile stimulation is a well-established tool for inducing somatosensory cortical plasticity and changes in tactile perception. Previous studies have suggested that baseline performance determines the amount of stimulation-induced learning differently in specific populations. Older adults with lower baseline performance than young adult...

Tactile perception declines with age on both behavioral and neurophysiological levels. Less well understood is how neurophysiological changes relate to tactile discrimination performance in middle adulthood. A tactile discrimination task was conducted while ERPs were measured in three groups of healthy adults aged 20 to 66 years. Accuracy was lowes...

Recent studies revealed a positive influence of physical activity on cognitive functioning in older adults. Studies that investigate the behavioral and neurophysiological effects of type and long term duration of physical training, however, are missing. We performed a 12-month longitudinal study to investigate the effects of cardiovascular and coor...

Emotions remarkably impact our creative minds; nevertheless, a comprehensive mapping of their underlying neural mechanisms remains elusive. Therefore, we examined the influence of emotion induction on ideational originality and its associated neural dynamics. Participants were randomly presented with three short videos with sad, neutral, and happy...

Previous research has suggested that declines in physical function can be predicted by general cognitive scores. This study aimed to further investigate the longitudinal interplay between cognitive and physical functions, with a specific focus on determining which domain exerts a more pronounced influence on the other over time. A cross-lagged long...

We previously reported that after virtual tool use training, younger as compared to older adults experienced a higher sense of ownership over virtual tools associated with changes in sensorimotor representation (i.e., body schema). Moreover, higher agency ratings were contingent on their performance levels and the extent to which the virtual tool w...

In the present research, we examined the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on learning a dynamic balance task (DBT) in healthy older adults (OA). In a pre-and post-test randomized crossover design, eighteen healthy OA underwent DBT training while receiving tDCS either in two real stimulation conditions or a sham stimulation...

In this study by combining a-tDCS with DBT training and targeting two different brain regions, we aimed to find out the effective target for tDCS to facilitate learning performance and enhance balance in younger adults. Besides targeting the sensorimotor cortex (M1), we alternatively applied a-tDCS to the prefrontal cortex (left DLPFC). We further...

Emotions remarkably impact our creative minds; nevertheless, a comprehensive mapping of their underlying neural mechanisms remains elusive. Therefore, we explored the influence of induced emotional states on ideational originality and its associated neural dynamics. Participants were randomly presented with three short videos with sad, neutral, and...

This study addresses the modulatory role of individual mindset in explaining the relationship between response inhibition (RI) and divergent thinking (DT) using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Forty undergraduate students (22 male and 18 female), aged between 18 and 23 years (average age = 19 years, SD = 1.48), were recruited. Parti...

Background Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a frequently used brain stimulation method; however, studies on tactile perception using tDCS are inconsistent, which might be explained by the variations in endogenous and exogenous parameters that influence tDCS. Objectives We aimed to investigate the effect of one of these endogenous...

In this study we examined if training with a virtual tool in augmented reality (AR) affects the emergence of ownership and agency over the tool and whether this relates to changes in body schema (BS). 34 young adults learned controlling a virtual gripper to grasp a virtual object. In the visuo-tactile (VT) but not the vision-only (V) condition, vib...

In young adults (YA) who practised controlling a virtual tool in augmented reality (AR), the emergence of a sense of body ownership over the tool was associated with the integration of the virtual tool into the body schema (BS). Agency emerged independent of BS plasticity. Here we aimed to replicate these findings in older adults (OA). Although the...

We examined whether resting-state and task-related oscillations differently predict the practice effect during virtual tool-use training in young (YA) and older (OA) adults. Thirty-seven YA (Mage: 23.64, SD: 7.07) and forty-one OA (Mage: 68.92, SD: 4.49) learned to control a virtual gripper to grasp a virtual object. The training was organized in t...

The aim of this study was to extend previous findings on selective attention over a lifetime using machine learning procedures. By decoding group membership and stimulus type, we aimed to study differences in the neural representation of inhibitory control across age groups at a single-trial level. We re-analyzed data from 211 subjects from six age...

Why can some people generate outstanding creative ideas despite receiving frustrating feedback? Although previous studies highlighted the effects of emotional states on creativity, the interactions between specific psychophysiological emotional parameters or affective states and response inhibition (RI) on creativity remain elusive. Therefore, with...

In young adults (YA) who practised controlling a virtual tool in augmented reality (AR), the emergence of a sense of body ownership over the tool was associated with the integration of the virtual tool into the body schema (BS). Agency emerged independent of BS plasticity. Here we aimed to replicate these findings in older adults (OA). Although the...

In this study we examined if training with a virtual tool in augmented reality (AR) affects the emergence of ownership and agency over the tool and whether this relates to changes in body schema (BS). 34 young adults learned controlling a virtual gripper to grasp a virtual object. In the visuo-tactile (VT) but not the vision-only (V) condition, vib...

We investigated whether resting-state EEG predict learning slope during and after tool-use training in augmented reality and whether such changes are associated with performance in tactile localization test (TLT) as indicator of embodiment and body schema plasticity. 34 young and 40 older adults underwent a virtual tool-use training in AR with and...

Abstract Submission Topic: S_D. Sensory and Motor Systems / D.5 Tactile/somatosensory system / D.5.a Peripheral receptors Abstract Body Aims: We investigated whether training with a virtual tool in augmented reality (AR) has comparable effects on body schema (BS) and sense of ownership and agency in young and older adults, while leveraging AR to p...

The application of machine learning techniques provides a data-driven approach for a deeper understanding of the development and expressions of expertise. In extension to the common procedure of comparing expertś and noviceś performances in expertise-domain-related tasks we applied conventional classification algorithms. We distinguished between ta...

Objective Falling has various physical and psychological consequences in older adults. We aimed at replicating previous findings that reported autonomy is associated with a history of falls and that this association is moderated by self-efficacy. We further assumed that cognitive function would moderate this relationship. Method We analyzed data f...

Baseline alertness as the strongest predictor of employment status in patients with MS 6 months after rehabilitationS. Marchione, C. Dettmers, A. Weimer-Jaekel, B. Godde, M. JoebgesAbstractIntroduction: Fatigue is a dominant impairment in multiple sclerosis, which often also limits the professional performance of patients with MS (PwMS). In clini-c...

Background : Fatigue is potentially the most important factor causing unemployment in people with Multiple Sclerosis (PwMS). Widely accepted is a discrimination between fatigue as subjective sensation and fatigability as objective measure of change in performance. The aim of this study was to identify, whether cognitive fatigue or cognitive fatigab...

Introduction: Older adults show higher interindividual performance variability during the learning of new motor sequences than younger adults. It is largely unknown what factors contribute to this variability. This study aimed to, first, characterize age differences in motor sequence learning and, second, examine influencing factors for interindiv...

Classification of physiological data provides a data driven approach to study central aspects of motor control, which changes with age. To implement such results in real-life applications for elderly it is important to identify age-specific characteristics of movement classification. We compared task-classification based on EEG derived activity pat...

Es gibt verschiedene Theorien und Modelle, die Gesundheitsverhalten beschreiben und erklären. Diese Theorien und Modelle sind vor allem deswegen wichtig, weil sie die Grundlage für die Entwicklung und Evaluation von Maßnahmen zur Verbesserung gesundheitsbezogenen Handelns und generell für die Optimierung von Verhaltensänderung sein können. Die Evid...

We investigated whether virtual tool-use training combined with vibro-tactile feedback on the thumb and index finger changes localization of tactile stimuli on those fingers as well as associated cortical processing. Thirty young adult participants learned controlling a virtual gripper in augmented reality to grasp virtual objects at various loc...

We examined whether resting-state and task-related EEG power over centro-parietal and frontal brain regions were changed by virtual tool-use training and whether such changes were associated with learning, sense of agency and ownership. Thirty-four young adult participants learned to use a virtual tool for grasping an object in augmented reality...

As insomnia is recognized as a globally prevalent mental disorder with a high comorbidity rate, attempts to cure insomnia have been increasing. Primary insomnia is not attributed to other medical conditions or substance usage but may be due to impaired brain network and dysregulated brain activities. Normally, a bottom-up thalamocortical pathway is...

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a neurological and developmental disorder that starts early in infancy and lasts throughout a person's life affecting information flow in the brain leading to secondary problems for the patient. Early detection of ASD is vital in enhancing the efficiency of the treatment. Current diagnostic approaches for autism are time...

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a neurological and developmental disorder that starts early in infancy and lasts throughout a person’s life affecting information flow in the brain leading to secondary problems for the patient. Early detection of ASD is vital in enhancing the efficiency of the treatment. Current diagnostic approaches for autism are time...

From resting-state Electroencephalography (EEG) signals, two Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) detectors were created. One of the detectors contained extreme gradient boosting (XGB), which used polynomial combinations of delta and theta relative power band (ID-2), and the other detector was created using a visual representation of the...

Brain plasticity in the somatosensory cortex and tactile performance can be facilitated by brain stimulation. Here, we investigated the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on tactile perception in musicians and non-musicians to elucidate how tDCS-effects might depend on tactile expertise. On three separate days, 17 semi-profes...

Sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) is a trait correlated with increased sensitivity to internal and external stimuli. FMRI studies indicate that increased activation in areas associated with attention, empathy, and higher-order visual processing correlate with high SPS. We used electroencephalography frequency power spectra in four frequency band...

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Divergent thinking (DT) as one component of creativity is the ability to search for multiple solutions to a single problem and is reliably tested with the Alternative Uses Task (AUT). DT depends on activity in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), a prefrontal region that has also been associated with inhibitory control (IC). Experimentally manipulatin...

Creative thinking forms the basis for many innovations in business, science, culture or everyday life. Despite its importance, the neurobiology of creativity has been researched very little. Scientists at Jacobs University have now measured our ability to develop new and original solutions – and discovered, among other things, that creativity can b...

Miller et al. (2014) described altered arm representation and body schema after training to use a mechanical gripper for grasping distant objects. We examined whether similar training with a virtual tool in augmented reality (AR) would have comparable effects. Thirty young adults learned controlling a virtual gripper to grasp virtual objects at var...

Divergent thinking (DT) as one component of creativity is the ability to search for multiple solutions to a single problem and is reliably tested with the Alternative Uses Task (AUT). DT depends on activity in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), a prefrontal region that has also been associated with inhibitory control (IC). Experimentally manipulatin...

Electronic supplementary material linked to" Effects of transcranial direct current stimulation of left and right inferior frontal gyrus on creative divergent thinking are moderated by changes in inhibition control"

Brain plasticity in somatosensory cortex can be facilitated by brain stimulation. To elucidate the relationship between the magnitude of plasticity and tactile performance with tactile expertise, we investigated the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on tactile perception in musicians and non-musicians. At three separate days...

Neuroimaging have shown that the anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC; BA9/10) is involved in Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks such as the recognition of facial emotional expressions (for a review see Kripple & Karim, 2011; Khalil et al., 2018). However, since neuroimaging methods only allow correlative statements the causal contribution of the aPFC in ToM t...

Major and minor modes are closely linked to the emotional properties of music. Previous research on the late positive components (LPC) of auditory event-related potentials (ERP) suggests that the minor mode is perceived as a lower-pitched deviant from the major mode. In this study, we compared the behavioral and ERP results of 30 musicians and 29 n...

Moderate intensity cardiovascular exercise appears to provide a low-cost “intervention” on neurocognitive processes such as attentional control, yet the effects vary depending, for example, on cognitive task, time of testing, or exercise intensity. However, while a number of studies show that brief bouts of acute exercise can modulate behavioral in...

Evidence suggests that reduced bottom-up processing due to aging-related brain deterioration needs to be considered when trying to understand how cognitive resources and processing arousing emotional information are associated in old age. Moreover, cognitive resources have been shown to decrease in older adults while high interindividual variabilit...

Having a creative mind is one of the gateways for achieving fabulous success and remarkable progress in professional, personal and social life. Therefore, a better understanding of the neural correlates and the underlying neural mechanisms related to creative ideation is crucial and valuable. However, the current literature on neural systems and ci...

It remains controversial whether aging influences motor learning and whether physiological factors, such as local strength or fitness, are associated with fine motor performance and learning in older adults (OA). OA (n = 51) and young adults (YA, n = 31) performed a short-term motor learning session using a precision grip force modulation task. The...

The ability to selectively attend to task-relevant information increases throughout childhood and decreases in older age. Here, we intended to investigate these opposing developmental trajectories, to assess whether gains and losses early and late in life are associated with similar or different electrophysiological changes, and to get a better und...

Acute bouts of exercise have been shown to improve fine motor control performance and to facilitate motor memory consolidation processes in young adults. Exercise effects might be reflected in EEG task-related power (TRPow) decreases in the beta band (13–30 Hz) as an indicator of active motor processing. This study aimed to investigate those effect...

It is well-established that expertise developed through continuous and deliberate practice has the potential to delay age-related decline in fine motor skills. However, less is known about the underlying mechanisms, that is, whether expertise leads to a higher performance level changing the initial status from which age-related decline starts or if...

Participants practiced a fixed 3- and a fixed 6-key press sequence for 144 times each. In the speed group, they were instructed to execute their sequences fast without bothering much about errors while the accurate group was instructed to be careful and prevent errors. In the test phase, participants executed series of 3 and 6 responses (a) when al...

Tactile perception results from the interplay of peripheral and central mechanisms for detection and sensation of objects and the discrimination and evaluation of their size, shapes, and surface characteristics. For different tasks, we investigated this interaction between more bottom-up stimulus-driven and rather top-down attention-related and cog...

Age-related deterioration of force control is evident on behavioral and neural levels. Extensive and deliberate practice can decrease these changes. This study focused on detecting electrophysiological correlates of age and expertise-related differences in force control. We examined young (20-27years) and late middle-aged (57-67 years) novices as w...

Diverse adaptive visual processing mechanisms allow us to complete visual search tasks in a wide visual photopic range (>0.6 cd/m²). Whether search strategies or mechanisms known from this range extend below, in the mesopic and scotopic luminance spectra (<0.6 cd/m²), has yet to be addressed. Based on a study that addressed simple target discrimina...

Older adults (OA) compared to young adults (YA) reveal deteriorated fine motor control. However, it remains unknown whether this age difference is reflected on the central level, i.e., in electrophysiological correlates such as EEG task-related power (TRPow) in alpha (8-13 Hz) or beta band (13-30 Hz). Furthermore, we were interested in the associat...

When two tasks are performed simultaneously, performance often declines in one or both tasks. These so-called dual-task costs are more pronounced in old than in young adults. One proposed neurological mechanism of the dual-task costs is that old compared with young adults tend to execute single-tasks with higher brain activation. In the brain regio...

MoCa. Montreal cognitive asessment (max. score of 30). (DOCX)

Validation. Center of pressure (CoP) velocity during normal standing and root-mean-square error (RMSE) angle between the avatar and the vertical during simulated standing. (DOCX)

Deactivation. MNI coordinates and t-values of the local maxima with significant deactivation during balance, calculation and dual-tasking (p < 0.05; FWE corrected for multiple comparisons). Voxel size is 3x3x3 mm. (DOCX)

Behavioral data. Root-mean-square error (RMSE) angle between the avatar and the vertical during balance and dual-tasking, percentage trials with a correct answer on the calculation task during calculation and dual-tasking, and performance decline from single- to dual-tasking. (DOCX)

Learning new motor skills is important for everyday life and independent living in older age. While studies on motor sequence learning and motor adaptation revealed age differences that are mostly related to frontal decline with increasing age, data for fine finger force modulation are missing. Twelve young (YA, 18–28 years) and twelve middle-aged...

EEG records the electrical activities from the scalp surface via electrodes. As a modern medical imaging technique, it has been proven to be useful in many different fields. Clinical diagnosis, psychotherapy, brain-computer interfaces and the pharmaceutical industry all have benefited from the insights that one can glean from EEG measurements. Howe...

An acute bout of high intensity physical exercise, as compared to a resting condition, led to enhanced improvement in fine motor performance 24 h after physical exercise in young adults, indicating that acute exercise can boost motor learning [1]. In older adults, cardiovascular fitness level is positively associated with fine motor performance [2]...

We examined if physical exercise interventions were effective to reduce cognitive brain resources recruited while performing motor control tasks in older adults. Forty-three older adults (63–79 years of age) participated in either a walking (n = 17) or a motor coordination (n = 15) intervention (1 year, 3 times per week) or were assigned to a contr...

Complex interactions of various subsystems contributing to force control result in observable behavioral fluctuations that comprise both determinist and stochastic dynamical components. In the present study, we investigated both these components of the dynamics involved in visuomotor force control in different populations. To this aim, young and la...

Question: Noninvasive cortical stimulation techniques such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) are capable of increasing and decreasing cortical excitability and thereby might be clinically relevant for rehabilitation of neurological and neuropsy-chiatric disorders. However, the induced after-effects are usually too short-lasting...

Question Noninvasive cortical stimulation techniques such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) are capable of increasing and decreasing cortical excitability and thereby might be clinically relevant for rehabilitation of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. However, the induced after-effects are usually too short-lasting t...

Cognitive and brain aging is strongly influenced by everyday settings such as work demands. Long-term exposure to low job complexity, for instance, has detrimental effects on cognitive functioning and regional gray matter (GM) volume. Brain and cognition, however, are also characterized by plasticity. We postulate that the experience of novelty (at...

In this chapter, we review in detail how physical activity, physical fitness, and fitness interventions are related to and influence cognitive performance and brain health in older adults. To facilitate the understanding of differential exercise effects on cognitive and brain function, we begin with an overview on age-related cognitive and brain ch...

The individual lifestyle factor physical activity has been shown to improve cognitive and motor skills across the lifespan. Physical activity further impacts processes in the brain and modulates corresponding brain structures. Respective research distinguishes between effects of acute bouts of exercise and of engagement in long-term physical activi...

Objective: We aimed to examine if and how age as well as tactile sensitivity and perception had an impact on how women liked richer and lighter creams. Furthermore, the question arose if age and tactile perception had an influence on the ability to distinguish between the creams and how the ability to distinguish between creams influenced the liki...

Recent research revealed considerable decline in visual perception under low luminance conditions. However, systematic studies on how visual performance is affected by absolute luminance and luminance contrast under low mesopic conditions (<0.5 cd/m2) is lacking. We examined performance in a simple visual discrimination task under low mesopic lumin...

Question Noninvasive cortical stimulation techniques such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) are capable of increasing and decreasing cortical excitability and thereby might be clinically relevant for rehabilitation of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. However, the induced after-effects are usually too short-lasting t...

In Germany as well as in most Western industrialized countries, the work-force is rapidly “aging”. Modern companies therefore increasingly need to abandon established approaches to occupational safety and pursue preventive strategies to protect and restore well-being, work ability, and good health across the entire lifespan. Hence, effective occupa...

Older adults recruit relatively more frontal as compared to parietal resources in a variety of cognitive and perceptual tasks. It is not yet clear whether this parietal-to-frontal shift is a compensatory mechanism, or simply reflects a reduction in processing efficiency. In this study we aimed to investigate how the parietal-to-frontal shift with a...

Das Lehrbuch zur Gerontopsychologie gibt einen verständlichen Überblick über die Grundlagen und Mechanismen des Alterns und zeigt Ansatzpunkte für erfolgreiches und gesundes Altern im Sinne der Lebensspannenpsychologie auf. Theorien zur Gerontopsychologie, empirische Befunde und Anwendungsbeispiele aus verschiedenen Disziplinen (Psychologie, Neurow...

[1] Zele AJ, Cao D. Vision under mesopic and scotopic illumination. Front Psychol. 2015 Jan 22; 5:1594 [2] Hunter M, Godde B, Olk, B (Under Revision) Effects of Absolute Luminance and Luminance Contrast on Visual Discrimination Task in Low Mesopic Stimuli. [3] Hunter M, Godde B, Olk B. Effect of complimentary tactile information in visual search pe...

Physical activity is positively related to cognitive functioning and brain volume in older adults. Interestingly, different types of physical activity vary in their effects on cognition and on the brain. For example, dancing has become an interesting topic in aging research, as it is a popular leisure activity among older adults, involving cardiova...

ABSTRACT The authors examined age-related differences in fine motor control during a bimanual coordination task. The task required the modulation of fingertip forces in the precision grip according to a visually presented sinusoidal antiphase pattern (force range 2-12 N; frequency 0.2 Hz). Thirty-four right-handed participants of three age groups (...

Physical activity has been demonstrated to diminish age-related brain volume shrinkage in several brain regions accompanied by a reduction of age-related decline in cognitive functions. Most studies investigated the impact of cardiovascular fitness or training. Other types of fitness or training are less well investigated. In addition, little is kn...

A decline in manual dexterity is common in older adults and has been demonstrated to account for much of the observed impairment in everyday tasks, like pouring milk into a cup, preparing meals, or retrieving coins from a purse. Aiming at the understanding of the underlying mechanisms, the investigation of the regulation and coordination of isometr...