
Jürgen KornmeierInstitut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene
Jürgen Kornmeier
Associate Professor
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79
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Introduction
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Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health
Position
- Director
Publications
Publications (79)
The P3b is a prominent event-related potential (ERP) with maximal amplitude between 250 ms and 500 ms after the onset of a rare target stimulus within a sequence of standard non-target stimuli (oddball paradigm). Several studies found reduced P3b amplitudes in patients with schizophrenia compared to neurotypicals. Our work and the literature sugges...
During visual imagination, a perceptual representation is activated in the absence of sensory input. This is sometimes described as seeing with the mind’s eye. A number of physiological studies indicate that the brain uses more or less the same neural resources for visual perception of sensory information and visual imagination. The intensity of vi...
The electroretinogram (ERG), a non-invasive electrophysiological tool used in ophthalmology, is increasingly applied to investigate neural correlates of depression. The present study aimed to reconsider previous findings in major depressive disorder (MDD) reporting (1) a diminished contrast sensitivity and (2) a reduced patten ERG (PERG) amplitude...
During visual imagination a perceptual representation is activated in the absence of sensory input. This is sometimes described as seeing with the mind’s eyes. A number of physiological studies indicate that the brain uses more or less the same neural resources for real visual perception and visual imagination. The intensity of visual imagination i...
During affective priming, perception of an emotional “prime stimulus” influences the reaction time of the subsequent emotional “target stimulus”. If prime and target have the same valence (congruent trials), reactions to the target are faster than if prime and target have different valences (incongruent trials). Bem introduced a backward priming pa...
Purpose
Perception of the motion quartet (MQ) alternates between horizontal and vertical motion, with a bias toward vertical motion. This vertical bias has been explained by the dominance of intrahemispheric processing. In albinism, each hemisphere receives input from both visual hemifields owing to enhanced crossing of the optic nerves at the opti...
Introduction
During observation of the ambiguous Necker cube, our perception suddenly reverses between two about equally possible 3D interpretations. During passive observation, perceptual reversals seem to be sudden and spontaneous. A number of theoretical approaches postulate destabilization of neural representations as a pre-condition for revers...
Magneto- and electroencephalography (M/EEG) are widespread techniques to measure neural activity in-vivo at a high temporal resolution but low spatial resolution. Locating the neural sources underlying the M/EEG poses an inverse problem, which is ill-posed. We developed a new method based on Recursive Application of Multiple Signal Classification (...
During observation of the ambiguous Necker cube, our perception suddenly reverses between two about equally possible 3D interpretations. During passive observation, perceptual reversals seem to be sudden and spontaneous. A number of theoretical approaches postulate destabilization of neural representations as a precondition for spontaneous reversal...
Improving our learning abilities is important for numerous aspects of our life. Several studies found beneficial effects of presenting cues (odor or sounds) during learning and during sleep for memory performance. A recent study applying a real-life paradigm indicated that additional odor cueing during a Final Test can further increase this cueing...
Magneto- and electroencephalography (M/EEG) are widespread techniques to measure neural activity in-vivo at a high temporal resolution but low spatial resolution. Locating the neural sources underlying the M/EEG poses an inverse problem, which is ill-posed. We developed a new method based on Recursive Application of Multiple Signal Classification (...
During the observation of an ambiguous figure, our perception becomes unstable and alternates repeatedly between mutual exclusive interpretations. Tiny changes of the stimulus features can disambiguate the figure and stabilize percepts. Recent EEG studies found much smaller amplitudes of two event-related potentials (ERPs), an anterior P200, 200 ms...
Since the retina shares its embryological origin with the central nervous system, optical coherence tomography (OCT), an imaging technique frequently employed in ophthalmology to analyze the macula and intraretinal layer thicknesses and volumes, has recently become increasingly important in psychiatric research. We examined 34 autistic and 31 neuro...
Visual snow is a condition of unclear prevalence characterized by tiny flickering dots throughout the entire visual field. It appears to result from visual cortex hyperactivity and possibly correlates with propensity to be engrossed in sensory and imaginary experiences (absorption). The prevalence and correlates of visual snow, and emotional reacti...
Ophthalmological methods have increasingly raised the interest of neuropsychiatric specialists. While the integrity of the retinal cell functions can be evaluated with the electroretinogram (ERG), optical coherence tomography (OCT) allows a structural investigation of retinal layer thicknesses. Previous studies indicate possible functional and stru...
One of the great challenges in psychiatry is finding reliable biomarkers that may allow for more accurate diagnosis and treatment of patients. Neural variability received increasing attention in recent years as a potential biomarker. In the present explorative study we investigated temporal variability in visually evoked EEG activity in a cohort of...
Improving our learning abilities is important for numerous aspects of our life. Several studies found beneficial effects of presenting cues (odor or sounds) during learning and during sleep for learning performance. A recent study applying a real-life paradigm indicated that additional odor cueing during a Final Test can further increase this cuein...
Magneto- and electroencephalography (M/EEG) are widespread techniques to measure neural activity in vivo at a high temporal resolution but relatively low spatial resolution. Locating the sources underlying the M/EEG poses an inverse problem, which is itself ill-posed. In recent years, a new class of source imaging methods was developed based on art...
Spaced learning produces better learning performance than extended learning periods without or with little interruptions. This “spacing effect” exists on different time scales, ranging from seconds to months. We recently found large spacing effects with a hithero rarely investigated 12-hours spacing interval.
The present study tested for potentiall...
Background: The retina has gained increasing attention in non-ophthalmological research in recent years. The pattern electroretinogram (PERG), a method to evaluate retinal ganglion cell function, has been used to identify objective correlates of the essentially subjective state of depression. A reduction in the PERG contrast gain was demonstrated i...
Current theories about visual perception assume that our perceptual system weights the a priori incomplete, noisy and ambiguous sensory information with previous, memorized perceptual experiences in order to construct stable and reliable percepts. These theories are supported by numerous experimental findings. Theories about precognition have an op...
Visual snow is a condition of unclear prevalence characterized by tiny flickering dots throughout the entire visual field. It appears to result from visual cortex hyperactivity and possibly correlates with propensity to be engrossed in sensory and imaginary experiences (absorption). The prevalence and correlates of visual snow, and emotional reacti...
Background: One of the great challenges in psychiatry is finding reliable biomarkers that may allow for more accurate diagnosis and treatment of patients. In this context the topic of neural variability received scientific attention in recent years. Altered neural variability was found in different cohorts of patients with autism spectrum disorder...
The electroencephalography (EEG) is a well-established non-invasive method in neuroscientific research and clinical diagnostics. It provides a high temporal but low spatial resolution of brain activity. To gain insight about the spatial dynamics of the EEG, one has to solve the inverse problem, i.e., finding the neural sources that give rise to the...
The information available through our senses is noisy, incomplete, and to varying degrees ambiguous. The perceptual system must create stable and reliable percepts out of this restricted information. It solves this perceptual inference problem by integrating memories of previous percepts and making predictions about the perceptual future.
Using amb...
The information available through our senses is noisy, incomplete, and ambiguous. Our perceptual systems have to resolve this ambiguity to construct stable and reliable percepts. Previous EEG studies found large amplitude differences in two event-related potential (ERP) components 200 and 400 ms after stimulus onset when comparing ambiguous with di...
A popular model for sensory processing, known as predictive coding, proposes that incoming signals are iteratively compared with top-down predictions along a hierarchical processing scheme. At each step, error signals arising from differences between actual input and prediction are forwarded and recurrently minimized by updating internal models to...
EEG and MEG are well-established non-invasive methods in neuroscientific research and clinical diagnostics. Both methods provide a high temporal but low spatial resolution of brain activity. In order to gain insight about the spatial dynamics of the EEG one has to solve the inverse problem, which means that more than one configuration of neural sou...
Effortless learning during sleep is everybody’s dream. Several studies found that presenting odor cues during learning and selectively during slow wave sleep increases learning success. The current study extends previous research in three aspects to test for optimization and practical applicability of this cueing effect: We (1) performed a field st...
During the observation of an ambiguous figure our perception alternates between mutually exclusive interpretations, although the stimulus itself remains unchanged. The rate of these endogenous reversals has been discussed as reflecting basic aspects of endogenous brain dynamics. Recent evidence indicates that extensive meditation practice evokes lo...
Single case studies have a long tradition in the field of parapsychology and anomalistics research. Naturally, thorough case studies do not usually provide hard evidence for the existence of paranormal effects. However, they demonstrate the dynamics of occurrence of such extraordinary phenomena and experiences in the living world. This volume is in...
In einem schwarzen Fotoalbum mit 'nem silbernen Knopf Bewahr ich alle diese Bilder im Kopf (Sido: "Bilder im Kopf ") 2 "Images in the Head" and the Constructive Aspects of Human Perception With the opening of the "perceptual window to the world", and thus the start of differentiated perception, human beings generate meaningful patterns from structu...
Aim
The present study utilizes perceptual hysteresis effects to compare the ambiguity of Mona Lisa’s emotional face expression (high-level ambiguity) and of geometric cube stimuli (low-level ambiguity).
Methods
In two experiments we presented series of nine Mona Lisa variants and nine cube variants. Stimulus ambiguity was manipulated by changing M...
Data file containing percept responses and averaged reaction times (+ standard deviations) of the individual participants and experimental conditions.
(XLSX)
Introduction: Consolidation is defined as the time necessary for memory stabilization after learning. In the present study we focused on effects of interference during the first 12 consolidation minutes after learning. Participants had to learn a set of German – Japanese word pairs in an initial learning task and a different set of German – Japanes...
Background
During observation of the Necker cube perception becomes unstable and alternates repeatedly between a from-above-perspective (“fap”) and a from-below-perspective (“fbp”) interpretation. Both interpretations are physically equally plausible, however, observers usually show an a priori top-down bias in favor of the fap interpretation. Pati...
Reversal rate and stability duratin raw data.
“FB” = lattice front side bottom right;
“FT” = lattice front side top left;
line 4: Header labeling the individual participants with "GX_RR" or "FX_RR": "G" = control participants; "F" = Asperger patients; "X" substitute for letters from "A" to "V", coding individual participants in the two groups;
“RR”...
The Necker-Zeno model of bistable perception provides a formal relation between the average duration of meta-stable percepts (dwell times T) of ambiguous figures and two other basic time scales (t0, ΔT) underlying cognitive processing. The model predicts that dwell times T covary with t0, ΔT or both. We tested this prediction by exploiting that obs...
The worldwide fascination of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa has been dedicated to the emotional ambiguity of her face expression. In the present study we manipulated Mona Lisa’s mouth curvature as one potential source of ambiguity and studied how a range of happier and sadder face variants influences perception. In two experimental conditions we presented di...
Environmental information available to our senses is incomplete and to varying degrees ambiguous. It has to be disambiguated in order to construct stable and reliable percepts. Ambiguous figures are artificial examples where perception is maximally unstable and alternates between possible interpretations. Tiny low-level changes can disambiguate an...
Background
In von Schiller’s Stroboscopic Alternative Motion (SAM) stimulus two visually presented diagonal dot pairs, located on the corners of an imaginary rectangle, alternate with each other and induce either horizontal, vertical or, rarely, rotational motion percepts. SAM motion perception can be described by a psychometric function of the dot...
Patients with schizophrenia have often been described as insensitive to nociceptive signals, but objective evidence is sparse. We address this question by combining subjective behavioral and objective neurochemical and neurophysiological measures. The present study involved 21 stabilized and mildly symptomatic patients with schizophrenia and 21 con...
Perception of ambiguous figures is unstable and alternates repeatedly between possible interpretations. Some approaches to explaining this phenomenon have, so far, assumed low-level bottom-up mechanisms like adaptation and mutual inhibition of underlying neural assemblies. In contrast, less precise top-down approaches assume high-level attentional...
Ambiguous figures attract observers because perception alternates between different interpretations while the sensory information stays unchanged. Understanding the underlying processes is difficult because the precise time instant of this endogenous reversal event needs to be known but is difficult to measure. Presenting ambiguous figures disconti...
Some German hunters came up with pictures taken from a wildlife camera and showing a strange humanoid-like object of about 10 cm size. Its puzzling appearance and a remarkable absence of wildlife in that area after its occurrence triggered paranormal explanations. After reexamination of the pictures, we found a more plausible conventional explanati...
During the observation of an ambiguous figure, like the Necker cube, our perceptual system is unstable and alternates spontaneously between two (or more) mutual exclusive representations. Tiny figural changes can disambiguate the ambiguous figure, thus stabilize one representation and induce two sizable ERP components, a fronto-central P200 and a p...
Asperger Autism is a lifelong psychiatric condition with highly circumscribed interests and routines, problems in social cognition, verbal and nonverbal communication, and also perceptual abnormalities with sensory hypersensitivity. To objectify both lower-level visual and cognitive alterations we looked for differences in visual event-related pote...
Temporally distributed ("spaced") learning can be twice as efficient as massed learning. This "spacing effect" occurs with a broad spectrum of learning materials, with humans of different ages, with non-human vertebrates and also invertebrates. This indicates, that very basic learning mechanisms are at work ("generality"). Although most studies so...
It is often believed that the integration of information over time is similar at the unconscious and conscious levels. Here we will present four different studies suggesting that the time resolution of unconscious information processing is much better than previously believed, but also that information is not integrated over such short intervals li...
Purpose
We sought brain activity that predicts visual consciousness.
Methods
We used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain activity to a 1000-ms display of sine-wave gratings, oriented vertically in one eye and horizontally in the other. This display yields binocular rivalry: irregular alternations in visual consciousness between the images...
When each eye views a different stimulus, visual perception alternates irregularly between them: binocular rivalry. One theory is that: reciprocal inhibition between neurons processing the two stimuli yields active (dominant) and suppressed neurons—we see the stimulus processed by active neurons; adaptation of active neurons eventually reverses act...
Repeated learning improves memory. Temporally distributed (“spaced”) learning can be twice as efficient than massed learning. Importantly, learning success is a non-monotonic maximum function of the spacing interval between learning units. Further optimal spacing intervals seem to exist at different time scales from seconds to days. We briefly revi...
During observation of ambiguous figures our perception reverses spontaneously although the visual information stays unchanged. Research on this phenomenon so far suffered from the difficulty to determine the instant of the endogenous reversals with sufficient temporal precision. A novel experimental paradigm with discontinuous stimulus presentation...
During observation of an ambiguous Necker cube, our percept changes spontaneously although the external stimulus does not. An EEG paradigm allowing time-resolved EEG measurement during endogenous perceptual reversals recently revealed a chain of ERP correlates beginning with an early occipital positivity at around 130 ms (Reversal Positivity, "RP")...
Ambiguous figures induce sudden transitions between rivaling percepts. We investigated electroencephalogram frequency modulations of accompanying change-related de- and rebinding processes. Presenting the stimuli discontinously, we synchronized perceptual reversals with stimulus onset, which served as a time reference for averaging. The resultant g...
Zusammenfassung
Wiederholtes Lernen steigert bekanntlich die Gedächtnisleistung. Dabei ist zeitlich verteiltes Lernen effektiver als kurzfristige Lernmarathons. Weniger bekannt ist, dass es optimale zeitliche Abstände zwischen Lernwiederholungen gibt, die die Merkfähigkeit mehr als verdoppeln können (Spacing-Effekt). Gleichermaßen unbekannt ist, da...
Repeated learning improves memory, as is well known. It may also be known that temporally distributed (spaced) learning is more efficient than massed learning. Widely unknown, however, may be the existence of optimal spacing intervals that can increase memory performance to more than twice the performance with massed learning. It is also widely unk...
Prolonged viewing of ambiguous stimuli (eg. the Necker Cube) causes spontaneous change in perception. Previous studies of electrophysiological correlates used subjects' response as time reference for averaging, entailing marked latency jitter. We introduced a new paradigm as follows: We attempted to entrain spontaneous reversals to specific time in...
Background. The percept of ambiguous figures (e.g. the Necker cube) changes spontaneously even while the figure stays unchanged. Event related potentials (ERPs) can trace the time course of the underlying neural processes. In case of endogenous events, like perceptual reversals, this technique suffers from the high temporal jitter of subjects' reac...
Suitable sequentially rejective multiple test procedures allow to “zoom in" on clusters of relevant variables in high-dimensional regression (Meinshausen [7]), or on regions of interest in some search space (Heinrich et al. [3]; Meinshausen et al. [8]). As a common framework for these schemes we propose to consider multiple testing along a tree of...
A sequential multiple testing procedure recently introduced by Heinrich, Bach and Kornmeier allows to "zoom in" on, and thus identify regions with highly significant departures from null-hypotheses. The purpose of this note is to state a general version of this procedure and to prove that it is conservative. Two possible applications are briefly in...
Although our eyes receive incomplete and ambiguous information, our perceptual system is usually able to successfully construct a stable representation of the world. In the case of ambiguous figures, however, perception is unstable, spontaneously alternating between equally possible outcomes. The present study compared EEG responses to ambiguous fi...
The “Necker-Zeno model”, a model for bistable perception inspired by the quantum Zeno effect, was previously used to relate three basic time scales of cognitive relevance to one another in a quantitative manner. In this paper, the model predictions are compared with experimental results obtained under discontinuous presentation of an ambiguous stim...