Franziska Knolle

Technische Universität München | TUM

Despite many differences, autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia spectrum disorder share environmental risk factors, genetic predispositions as well as neuronal abnormalities, and show similar cognitive deficits in working memory, perspective taking, or response inhibition. These shared abnormalities are already present in subclinical traits of...

H-MRS is increasingly used in basic and clinical research to explain brain function and alterations respectively. In psychosis research it is now one of the main tools to investigate imbalances in the glutamatergic system. Interestingly, however, the findings are extremely variable even within patients of similar disease states. One reason may be t...

The sequela of COVID-19 include a broad spectrum of symptoms that fall under the umbrella term post-COVID-19 condition or syndrome (PCS). Immune dysregulation, autoimmunity, endothelial dysfunction, viral persistence, and viral reactivation have been identified as potential mechanisms. However, there is heterogeneity in expression of biomarkers, an...

Psychotic symptoms occur in a majority of schizophrenia patients and in ~50% of all Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients. Altered grey matter (GM) structure within several brain areas and networks may contribute to their pathogenesis. Little is known, however, about transdiagnostic similarities when psychotic symptoms occur in different disorders, suc...

Background: To interact successfully with their environment, humans need to build a model to make sense of noisy and ambiguous inputs. An inaccurate model, as suggested to be the case for people with psychosis, disturbs optimal action selection. Recent computational models, such as active inference, have emphasized the importance of action selecti...

Background Despite many differences, autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia spectrum disorder share environmental risk factors, genetic predispositions as well as neuronal abnormalities, and show similar cognitive deficits in working memory, perspective taking, or response inhibition. These alterations are already present in subclinical traits...

Cognitive deficits are present in the majority of psychosis patients. They range across various domains, such as working memory, and executive functioning, and are linked to neurobiological changes, including changes in gray matter volume. In this study, we explored data-driven clustering solutions using behavioural, demographic, psychological and...

Negative symptoms, such as lack of motivation or social withdrawal, are highly prevalent and debilitating in patients with schizophrenia. Underlying mechanisms of negative symptoms are incompletely understood, thereby preventing the development of targeted treatments. We hypothesized that in patients with schizophrenia during psychotic remission, i...

Studies report a strong impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related stressors on the mental well-being of the general population. In this paper, we investigated whether COVID-19 related concerns and social adversity affected schizotypal traits, anxiety, and depression using structural equational modelling. In mediation analyses, we furthermore expl...

Background and Hypothesis In order to interact successfully with our environment, we need to build a model, to make sense of noisy and ambiguous inputs. An inaccurate model, as suggested to be the case in psychosis, disturbs optimal action selection. Recent computational models, such as active inference (AI), have emphasized the importance of actio...

Background Psychotic symptoms occur in a majority of schizophrenia patients, and in approximately 50% of all Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients. Altered grey matter (GM) structure within several brain areas and networks may contribute to their pathogenesis. Little, however, is known about transdiagnostic similarities when psychotic symptoms occur in...

The processing of salient and rewarding stimuli are integral to engaging our attention, stimulating anticipation for future events, and driving goal-directed behaviours. Widespread impairments in these processes are observed in psychosis, which may be associated with worse functional outcomes or mechanistically linked to the development of symptoms...

Studies report a strong impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related stressors on the mental wellbeing of general population. In this paper, we investigated whether COVID-19 related concerns and social adversity affected schizotypal traits, anxiety and depression using structural equational modelling. In mediation analyses, we furthermore explored w...

Importance: Although young adults are on average less affected by the physical consequences of COVID-19 infections, showing less severe disease progression and lower mortality risk, they suffer strongly from the mental health impact of the pandemic. Objective: We, a group of psychology students experiencing these impacts, aim to provide an overview...

Studies reported a strong impact on mental health during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in March–June, 2020. In this study, we assessed the impact of the pandemic on mental health in general and on schizotypal traits in two independent general population samples of the United Kingdom (May sample N: 239, October sample N: 126; participation...

Due to the spread of COVID-19, a key challenge was to reduce potential staff shortages in the healthcare sector. Besides recruiting retired healthcare workers, medical students were considered to support this task. Commitment of medical students in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic was evaluated using an online survey, with particular focus on t...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has led to dramatic social and economic changes in daily life. First studies report an impact on mental health of the general population showing increased levels of anxiety, stress and depression. In this study, we compared the impact of the pandemic on two culturally and economically similar European countries: the...

Studies reported a strong impact on mental health during the first wave of the COVID 19 pandemic in March to June, 2020. In this study, we investigated the impact of the pandemic on mental health in general and on schizoptypal traits specifically in general population samples of the UK (N 1st timepoint=239 , N 2nd timepoint= 126) and Germany (N 1st...

Aberrant dopamine function in the dorsal striatum and aberrant intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) between distinct cortical networks and thalamic nuclei are among the most consistent large-scale brain imaging findings in schizophrenia. A pathophysiological link between these two alterations is suggested by theoretical models based on striatal...

Background Cognitive impairment is a distinguishing feature of many neurodegenerative diseases. The intra-dimensional (ID) extra-dimensional (ED) attentional set shift task is part of a clinical battery of tests used to evaluate executive function in Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s disease patients. The IDED task however has not translated well to pre...

Introduction Due to the spreading of COVID-19, one key challenge was to reduce potential staff shortages in the healthcare sector. Besides a reactivation of retired healthcare workers, medical students were considered to support this task. We herein analysed the commitment of medical students during the COVID-19-pandemic as well as their burdens an...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has led to dramatic social and economic changes in daily life. First studies report an impact on mental health of the general population showing increased levels of anxiety, stress and depression. In this study, we compared the impact of the pandemic on two culturally and economically similar European countries: the...

Alterations in the balance between prior expectations and sensory evidence may account for faulty perceptions and inferences leading to psychosis. However, uncertainties remain about the nature of altered prior expectations and the degree to which they vary with the emergence of psychosis. We explored how expectations arising at two different level...

Background In schizophrenia, among the most consistent brain changes are both aberrant dopamine function in the dorsal striatum and aberrant intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) between distinct cortical networks and thalamic nuclei; however, it is unknown whether these changes are pathophysiologically related. Such a relationship is expected be...

Background Current research does not provide a clear explanation for why some patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) develop psychotic symptoms. In schizophrenia research the ‘aberrant salience hypothesis’ of psychosis has been influential in explaining the development of psychotic symptoms. The theory proposes that dopaminergic dysregulation leads...

Background Schizophrenia is a complex disorder in which the causal relations between risk genes and observed clinical symptoms are not well understood and the explanatory gap is too wide to be clarified without considering an intermediary level. Thus, we aimed to test the hypothesis of a pathway from molecular polygenic influence to clinical presen...

Objective Current research does not provide a clear explanation for why some patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) develop psychotic symptoms. The ‘aberrant salience hypothesis’ of psychosis has been influential and proposes that dopaminergic dysregulation leads to inappropriate attribution of salience to irrelevant/non-informative stimuli, facili...

In schizophrenia, among the most consistent brain changes are both aberrant dopamine function in the dorsal striatum and aberrant intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) between distinct cortical networks and thalamic nuclei; however, it is unknown whether these changes are pathophysiologically related. Such a relationship is expected because corti...

Background Current research does not provide a clear explanation for why some patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) develop psychotic symptoms. In the field of schizophrenia research the ‘aberrant salience hypothesis’ of psychosis has been influential. According to the theory, dopaminergic dysregulation leads to the inappropriate attribution of sa...

It has been suggested that speech production is accomplished by an internal forward model, reducing processing activity directed to self-produced speech in the auditory cortex. The current study uses an established N1-suppression paradigm comparing self- and externally initiated natural speech sounds to answer two questions: (1) Are forward predict...

Rationale Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have been found to show exaggerated error responses and prediction error learning signals in a variety of EEG and fMRI tasks, with data converging on the anterior cingulate cortex as a key locus of dysfunction. Considerable evidence has linked prediction error processing to dopaminergic fu...

It has been suggested that speech production is accomplished by an internal forward model, reducing processing activity directed to self-produced speech in the auditory cortex. The current study uses an established N1-suppression paradigm comparing self- and externally-initiated natural speech sounds to answer two questions: Are forward predictions...

Background: Schizophrenia is a complex disorder in which the causal relations between risk genes and observed clinical symptoms are not well understood and the explanatory gap is too wide to be clarified without considering an intermediary level. Thus, we aimed to test the hypothesis of a pathway from molecular polygenic influence to clinical prese...

Schizophrenia is a highly complex disorder in which patients exhibit a heterogeneity of symptoms, including hallucinations, anhedonia and cognitive deficits in domains such as reinforcement learning (Albrecht et al., 2016). Given this complexity, the causal relations between genes and observed clinical symptoms are not well understood. Further, the...

Background: Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have been found to show exaggerated error responses and prediction error learning signals in a variety of EEG and fMRI tasks, with data converging on the anterior cingulate cortex as a key locus of dysfunction. Although there is considerable evidence linking prediction error processing t...

Introduction: Schizophrenia is a highly complex disorder in which patients exhibit a heterogeneity of symptoms, including hallucinations, anhedonia and cognitive deficits in domains such as reinforcement learning (Albrecht et al., 2016). Given this complexity, the causal relations between genes and observed clinical symptoms are not well understood...

Response inhibition is a behavioural skill that is important for flexible behaviour and appropriate decision making. It requires the suppression of a prepotent, but inappropriate action, in order to achieve a more advantageous outcome. Response inhibition has been tested in many animal species using the cylinder task. This task requires the self-dr...

Alterations in the balance between prior expectations and sensory evidence may account for faulty perceptions and inferences leading to psychosis. However, uncertainties remain about the nature of altered prior expectations and the degree to which they vary with the emergence of psychosis. We explored how expectations arising at two different level...

Abnormal salience processing has been suggested to contribute to the formation of positive psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia and related conditions. Previous research utilising reward learning or anticipation paradigms has demonstrated cortical and subcortical abnormalities in people with psychosis, specifically in the prefrontal cortex, the dopa...

Abnormal salience processing has been suggested to contribute to the formation of positive psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia and related conditions. Previous research utilising reward learning or anticipation paradigms has demonstrated cortical and subcortical abnormalities in people with psychosis, specifically in the prefrontal cortex, the dopa...

Jumping to conclusions during probabilistic reasoning is a cognitive bias reliably observed in psychosis, and linked to delusion formation. Although the reasons for this cognitive bias are unknown, one suggestion is that psychosis patients may view sampling information as more costly. However, previous computational modelling has provided evidence...

Ongoing research suggests preliminary, though not entirely consistent, evidence of neural abnormalities in signalling prediction errors in schizophrenia. Supporting theories suggest mechanistic links between the disruption of these processes and the generation of psychotic symptoms. However, it is unknown at what stage in psychosis these impairment...

Many studies reveal a strong impact of childhood maltreatment on language development, mainly resulting in shorter utterances, less rich vocabulary, or a delay in grammatical complexity. However, different theories suggest the possibility for resilience—a positive adaptation to an otherwise adverse environment—in children who experienced childhood...

One of the most important human social skills is the ability to recognise faces. Humans recognise familiar faces easily, and can learn to identify unfamiliar faces from repeatedly- presented images. Sheep are social animals that can recognise other sheep as well as familiar humans. Little is known, however, about their holistic face-processing abil...

One of the most important human social skills is the ability to recognize faces. Humans recognize familiar faces easily, and can learn to identify unfamiliar faces from repeatedly presented images. Sheep are social animals that can recognize other sheep as well as familiar humans. Little is known, however, about their holistic face-processing abili...

2017 The Authors. One of the most important human social skills is the ability to recognize faces. Humans recognize familiar faces easily, and can learn to identify unfamiliar faces from repeatedly presented images. Sheep are social animals that can recognize other sheep as well as familiar humans. Little is known, however, about their holistic fac...

Ongoing research suggests preliminary, though not entirely consistent, evidence of neural abnormalities in signalling prediction errors in schizophrenia. Supporting theories suggest mechanistic links between the disruption of these processes and the generation of psychotic symptoms. However, it is not known at what stage in psychosis these impairme...

Many studies reveal a strong impact of childhood maltreatment on language development, mainly resulting in shorter utterances, less rich vocabulary, or a delay in grammatical complexity. However, different theories suggest the possibility for resilience – a positive adaptation to an otherwise adverse environment – in children who experienced childh...

Huntington's disease (HD) patients show reduced flexibility in inhibiting an already-started response. This can be quantified by the stop-signal task. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a sheep version of the stop-signal task that would be suitable for monitoring the progression of cognitive decline in a transgenic sheep model of HD....

Huntington's disease (HD) patients show reduced flexibility in inhibiting an already-started response. This can be quantified by the stop-signal task. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a sheep version of the stop-signal task that would be suitable for monitoring the progression of cognitive decline in a transgenic sheep model of HD....

Jumping to conclusions during probabilistic reasoning is a cognitive bias reliably observed in psychosis and linked to delusion formation. Although the reasons for this cognitive bias are unknown, one suggestion is that psychosis patients may view sampling information as more costly. However, previous computational modeling has provided evidence th...

Ongoing research suggests preliminary, though not entirely consistent, evidence of neural abnormalities in signalling prediction errors in schizophrenia. Supporting theories suggest mechanistic links between the disruption of these processes and the generation of psychotic symptoms. However, it is unknown at what stage in psychosis these impairment...

Sounds generated by one's own action elicit attenuated brain responses compared to brain responses to identical sounds that are externally-generated. The present study tested whether the suppression effect indexed by the N1- and P2-components of the event-related potential (ERP) is larger when self-generated sounds are correctly predicted than when...

Forward predictions are crucial in motor action (e.g., catching a ball, or being tickled) but may also apply to sensory or cognitive processes (e.g., listening to distorted speech or to a foreign accent). According to the "internal forward model," the cerebellum generates predictions about somatosensory consequences of movements. These predictions...