About
58
Publications
6,056
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
525
Citations
Citations since 2017
Publications
Publications (58)
Group living is thought to benefit from the ability to empathize with others. Much attention has been paid to empathy for the pain of others as an inhibitor of aggression. Empathizing with the positive affect of others has received less attention although it could promote helping by making it vicariously rewarding. Here, we review this latter, nasc...
Introduction: Receiving touch is of critical importance for human well-being. A large number of studies have shown that touch promotes mental and physical health. However, effect sizes differ considerably across studies and potential moderators of touch interventions remain unknown to this day.
Methods: We conducted a systematic review and a large-...
Most studies on emotion processing induce emotions through images or films. However, this method lacks ecological validity, limiting generalization to real-life emotion processing. More realistic paradigms using virtual reality (VR) may be better suited to investigate authentic emotional states and their neuronal correlates. This pre-registered stu...
Stress has been suggested as a factor that may explain the link between altered functional lateralization and psychopathology. Modulation of the function of the corpus callosum via stress hormones may be crucial in this regard. Interestingly, there is evidence that interhemispheric integration and hemispheric asymmetries are modifiable by endocrino...
The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated a drastic decrease in human social interactions including social touch. One of the most prevalent forms of touch is hugging. Hugging has been demonstrated to benefit both physical and mental well-being. In the present study, we used an ecological momentary assessment approach to assess the relationship between...
Emotion induction in psychological and neuroscientific research has been mostly done by presenting participants with picture or film material. However, it is debatable whether this passive approach to emotion induction results in an affective state comparable to real-life emotions, and if the neural correlates of emotion processing are ecologically...
Acute stress constitutes a strong impact on the brain and on cognitive and affective processing. On the neural level, acute stress modifies attention, memory, and executive functions. Moreover, it is related to an increase in stress hormones and negative affect. Electroencephalography (EEG) is a suitable tool to investigate the influence of acute s...
The main objective of this meta-analysis was to investigate handedness in post-traumatic stress disorder on a meta-analytical level. For this purpose, articles were identified via a search in PubMed, PsychInfo, PubPsych, ResearchGate, and Google Scholar. Studies reporting findings relating to handedness in PTSD patients and healthy controls were co...
Hemispheric asymmetries are a basic organizational principle of the human brain and are ubiquitous in the healthy population. Several psychological and developmental disorders have been associated with atypical lateralization patterns, especially with a reduction of asymmetry. Among these disorders are major depressive disorder (MDD), schizophrenia...
The main objective of this meta-analysis was to investigate handedness in post-traumatic stress disorder on a meta-analytical level. For this purpose, articles were identified via a search in PubMed, PsychInfo, PubPsych, ResearchGate, and Google Scholar. Studies reporting findings relating to handedness in PTSD patients and healthy controls were co...
1.
Summary
Most studies on emotion processing rely on the presentation of emotional images or films. However, this methodology lacks ecological validity, limiting the extent to which findings can generalize to emotion processing in the wild. More realistic paradigms using Virtual Reality (VR) may be better suited to investigate authentic emotional...
Embracing has several positive health effects, such as lowering blood pressure and decreasing infection risk. However, its association with general life satisfaction and daily mood has not been researched in detail. Here, we used a smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA) approach to monitor the daily number of embraces and daily mood...
Pigeons are classic model animals to study perceptual category learning. To achieve a deeper understanding of the cognitive mechanisms of categorization, a careful consideration of the employed stimulus material and a thorough analysis of the choice behavior is mandatory. In the present study, we combined the use of “virtual phylogenesis”, an evolu...
Emotional contagion refers to the transmission of emotions from one conspecific to another. Previous research in rodents has demonstrated that the self-experience of footshocks enhances how much an observer is affected by the emotional state of a conspecific in pain or distress. We hypothesized auditory auto-conditioning to contribute to this enhan...
The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated a drastic decrease of human social interactions including human social touch. One of the most prevalent forms of touch is hugging. Hugging has been demonstrated to benefit both physical and mental well-being. In the present study, we used an ecological momentary assessment approach to assess the relationship b...
Stress is omnipresent in our everyday lives. It is therefore critical to identify potential stress-buffering behaviors that can help to prevent the negative effects of acute stress in daily life. Massages, a form of social touch, are an effective buffer against both the endocrinological and sympathetic stress response in women. However, for other f...
Social affective touch is an important aspect of close relationships in humans. It has been also observed in many non-human primate species. Despite the high relevance of behaviours like embraces for personal wellbeing and mental health, they remain vastly under-investigated in psychology. This may be because psychology often relies on a limited re...
Information is exchanged and integrated between the two hemispheres of the human brain via the corpus callosum. Previous work has shown that sex hormones like estradiol and progesterone can affect excitatory and inhibitory properties of the corpus callosum. Thus, it is evident that interhemispheric integration and hemispheric asymmetries are modifi...
Meta-analysis is a commonly used tool to provide insight into effect estimates with high confidence due to the increase in power and resistance to sampling bias compared to individual studies. However, meta-analysis is not without flaws as bias from original research can easily carry over to the synthesized analysis. In the present study, we used n...
Social affective touch is an important aspect of close relationships in humans. It has been also observed in many non-human primate species. Despite the high relevance of behaviours like embraces for personal wellbeing and mental health, they remain vastly under-investigated in behavioural neuroscience. This may be because human neuroscience often...
Frontal EEG alpha band asymmetries have been linked to affective processing in healthy individuals and affective disorders. As stress provides a strong source of negative affect, the present study investigated how acute stress affects frontal EEG alpha asymmetries. Continuous EEG data were acquired from 51 healthy adult participants during stress i...
Chronic stress has been shown to have long-term effects on functional hemispheric asymmetries in both humans and non-human species. The short-term effects of acute stress exposure on functional hemispheric asymmetries are less well investigated. It has been suggested that acute stress can affect functional hemispheric asymmetries by modulating inhi...
Functional hemispheric asymmetries emerge as the left and the right hemisphere are dominant for different aspects of task processing. However, the hemispheres do not work independent of each other but share information through the corpus callosum. The integration of information across the corpus callosum is dependent on its structural integrity and...
Multi-component behavior is a form of goal-directed behavior that depends on the ability to execute various responses in a precise temporal order. Even though this function is vital for any species, little is known about how non-mammalian species accomplish such behavior and what the underlying neural mechanisms are. We show that humans and a non-m...
Cognitive functions are similar in birds and mammals. So, are therefore pallial cellular circuits and neuronal computations also alike? In search of answers, we move in from bird's pallial connectomes, to cortex-like sensory canonical circuits and connections, to forebrain micro-circuitries and finally to the avian "prefrontal" area. This voyage fr...
1.
Summary
Working memory is the cognitive capability to maintain and process information over short periods. Recent behavioral and computational studies have shown that increased visual information of the presented stimulus material is associated with enhanced working memory performance. However, the underlying neural correlates of this associati...
Stress is omnipresent in our everyday lives. It is therefore critical to identify potential stress-buffering behaviors that can help to prevent the negative effects of acute stress in daily life. Massages, a form of social touch, are an effective buffer against both the endocrinological and sympathetic stress response in women. However, for other f...
Chronic stress has been shown to have long-term effects on functional hemispheric asymmetries in both humans and non-human species. The short-term effects of acute stress exposure on functional hemispheric asymmetries are less well investigated. It has been suggested that acute stress can affect functional hemispheric asymmetries by modulating inhi...
Alterations in functional brain lateralization, often indicated by an increased prevalence of left- and/or mixed-handedness, have been demonstrated in several psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders like schizophrenia or autism spectrum disorder. For depression, however, this relationship is largely unclear. While a few studies found evidence...
Embracing has several positive health effects, such as lowering blood pressure and decreasing infection risk. However, its impact on subjective well-being and daily mood has not been researched in detail, especially with regard to more stable states such as personality, feelings of loneliness or relationship status. Here, we used a smartphone-based...
Pigeons are classic model animals to study perceptual category learning. A theoretical understanding of the cognitive mechanisms of categorization requires a careful consideration of the employed stimulus material. Optimally, stimuli should not consist of real-world objects that might be associated with prior experience. The number of exemplars sho...
In our recent opinion paper “Laterality 2020: entering the next decade”, we highlighted trends that we thought are likely to shape laterality research in the 2020s. Our opinion paper inspired 11 commentaries by experts from several disciplines which discussed a wide range of topics complementing the 10 trends we identified in the opinion paper. In...
Extinction learning, the process of ceasing an acquired behavior in response to altered reinforcement contingencies, is not only essential for survival in a changing environment, but also plays a fundamental role in the treatment of pathological behaviors. During therapy and other forms of training involving extinction, subjects are typically expos...
Alterations in functional brain lateralization, often indicated by an increased prevalence of left- and/or mixed-handedness, have been demonstrated in several psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders like schizophrenia or autism spectrum disorder. For depression, however, this relationship is largely unclear. While a few studies found evidence...
Psychosocial stress is an omnipresent phenomenon whose neural correlates in humans are still poorly understood. Several paradigms have been developed to induce acute stress in fMRI settings, but it is unclear whether there is a global brain activation pattern related to psychosocial stress. To integrate the different neuronal activation patterns, w...
The neural basis of emotional processing has been largely investigated in constrained spatial environments such as stationary EEGs or fMRI scanners using highly artificial stimuli like standardized pictures depicting emotional scenes. Typically, such standardized experiments have low ecological validity and it remains unclear whether their results...
Functional hemispheric asymmetries (FHAs) have been thought to be relatively stable over time. However, past research has shown that FHAs are more plastic than initially thought. Endocrinological processes have been demonstrated to alter FHAs. As the product of the stress-activated hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis, cortisol influences informatio...
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
Human lateral preferences, such as handedness and footedness, have interested researchers for decades due to their pronounced asymmetries at the population level. While there are good estimates on the prevalence of handedness in the population, there is no large-scale estimation on the prevalence of footedness. Furthermore, the relationship between...
The neural basis of emotional processing has been largely investigated in constrained spatial environments such as stationary EEGs or fMRI scanners using highly artificial stimuli like standardized pictures depicting emotional scenes. Typically, such standardized experiments have low ecological validity and it remains unclear whether their results...
In the 2010s, significant progress has been made in several key areas of laterality research, including neuroimaging, genetics and comparative research. In the present article, we discuss which trends are likely to shape laterality research in the 2020s. These include, but are not limited to: (1) Finding laterality-specific solutions to the replica...
Human language is dominantly processed in the left cerebral hemisphere in most of the population. While several studies have suggested that there are higher rates of atypical right-hemispheric language lateralization in left-/mixed-handers, an accurate estimate of this association from a large sample is still missing. In this study, we comprised da...
Reward prediction errors (RPEs) have been suggested to drive associative learning processes, but their precise temporal dynamics at the single-neuron level remain elusive. Here, we studied the neural correlates of RPEs, focusing on their trial-by-trial dynamics during an operant extinction learning paradigm. Within a single behavioral session, pige...
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
Extinction learning, the process of ceasing an acquired behavior in response to altered reinforcement contingencies, is not only essential for survival in a changing environment, but also plays a fundamental role in the treatment of pathological behaviors. During therapy and other forms of training involving extinction, subjects are typically expos...
Human lateral preferences, such as handedness and footedness, have interested researchers for decades due to their pronounced asymmetries at population level. While there are good estimates on the prevalence of handedness in the population, there is, to this, day no large-scale estimation on the prevalence of footedness. Furthermore, the relationsh...
The Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (EHI) and the Waterloo Footedness Questionnaire (WFQ) are two of the most widely used questionnaires to assess lateralized everyday behavior in human participants. However, it is unclear to what extent the specific behavior assessed in these questionnaires elicit lateralized neural activity when performed in real-...
The ability to execute different responses in an expedient temporal order is central for efficient goal-directed behaviour and often referred to as multi-component behaviour. However, the underlying neural mechanisms on a cellular level remain unclear. Here we establish a link between neural activity at the cellular level within functional neuroana...
Cue competition refers to phenomena indicating that learning about the relationship between a cue and an outcome is influenced by learning about the predictive significance of other cues that are concurrently present. In two autoshaping experiments with pigeons, we investigated the strength of competition among cues for predictive value. In each ex...
In human social interaction, affective touch plays an integral role to communicate intentions and emotions. Three of the most important forms of social touch are embracing, cradling and kissing. These behaviours have been demonstrated to be lateralized, but the underlying mechanisms are still not well understood. Both motor and emotive biases have...
The earliest form of social contact for a newborn is being cradled by its mother. This important behavior has been found to be lateralized to the left side by many, but not all empirical studies. Factors that have been suggested to modulate cradling asymmetry are handedness and sex. However, these factors have not been demonstrated consistently, po...
Extinction learning is a fundamental capacity for adaptive and flexible behavior. As extinguished conditioned responding is prone to relapse under certain conditions, the necessity of memory consolidation for recovery phenomena to occur has been highlighted recently. Several studies have demonstrated that both acquisition and extinction training ne...
Humans are highly social animals that show a wide variety of verbal and non-verbal behaviours to communicate social intent. One of the most frequently used non-verbal social behaviours is embracing, commonly used as an expression of love and affection. However, it can also occur in a large variety of social situations entailing negative (fear or sa...
Handedness is the most investigated form of functional hemispheric asymmetries, but its neural correlates remain unclear. Functional imaging studies suggest differences between left- and right-handers in ipsilateral activation during unilateral hand movements, but do not allow for conclusions on the temporal dimension. In the Tapley and Bryden task...
Social touch is an important aspect of human social interaction - across all cultures, humans engage in kissing, cradling and embracing. These behaviors are necessarily asymmetric, but the factors that determine their lateralization are not well-understood. Because the hands are often involved in social touch, motor preferences may give rise to asy...
