Laura Kaltwasser

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | HU Berlin · Berlin School of Mind and Brain

Emotions are considered important in aesthetic experience. Given that emotions have bodily dimensions, it follows that interoception—the ability to perceive bodily signals accurately—may play a role in experiences of art. This raises the intriguing question of whether variation in interoceptive abilities relates to differences in art experience. We...

This study investigates the proposed mechanism of mindfulness, its impact on body awareness and interoception, and its potential benefits for mental and physical health. Using psychophysical assessments, we compared 31 expert meditators with 33 matched controls (non-meditators who engage in regular reading, more than 5 h per week) in terms of somat...

Heart rate variability (HRV) has been linked to resilience and emotion regulation (ER). How HRV and brain processing interact during ER, however, has remained elusive. Sixty-two subjects completed the acquisition of resting HRV and task HRV while performing an ER functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) paradigm, which included the differential...

Human memory consists of different underlying processes whose interaction can result in counterintuitive findings. One phenomenon that relies on various types of mnemonic processes is the repetition priming effect for unfamiliar target faces in familiarity decisions, which is highly variable and may even reverse. Here, we tested the hypothesis that...

The effects of mindfulness on body awareness and interoception have been proposed as potential mechanisms for its salutary effects. However, research investigating the relationship between mindfulness and body awareness using psychophysical measures is limited. In this study, we compared 31 expert meditators with 33 matched controls on somatosensor...

The effects of mindfulness on body awareness and interoception have been proposed as potential mechanisms for its salutary effects. However, research investigating the relationship between mindfulness and body awareness using psychophysical measures is limited. In this study, we compared 31 expert meditators with 33 matched controls on somatosensor...

Emotions are considered important in aesthetic experience. Given that emotions have bodily dimensions, it follows that interoception—the ability to perceive bodily signals accurately—may play a role in experiences of art. This raises the intriguing question of whether variation in interoceptive abilities relates to differences in art experience. We...

A basic distinction in theories of human memory is between explicit and implicit types of memory. However, little is known, how these forms of memory interact. An interesting test case is the repetition priming effect for unfamiliar faces in familiarity decisions on the target, which is highly variable and may even reverse. Here, we tested the hypo...

People remember what they deem important. In line with research suggesting that lower-class (vs. higher class) individuals spontaneously appraise other people as more relevant, we show that social class is associated with the habitual use of face memory. We find that lower-class (vs. higher class) participants exhibit better incidental memory for f...

Expertise in several areas appears to modulate neurocognitive processes. These processes have been observed to differ in visual arts experts compared to the general population. Here, we aimed to investigate whether visual artists' neural responses to tasks within and outside their field of expertise are contrasting to the responses of non-experts....

This technical paper provides a tutorial to build a low-cost (10-100 USD) and easy to assemble ECG device (ArdMob-ECG) that can be easily used for a variety of different scientific studies. The advantage of this device is that it automatically stores the data and has a built-in detection algorithm for heartbeats. Compared to a clinical ECG, this de...

The notion that self-disorders are at the root of the emergence of schizophrenia rather than a symptom of the disease, is getting more traction in the cognitive sciences. This is in line with philosophical approaches that consider an enactive self, constituted through action and interaction with the environment. We thereby analyze different definit...

There is growing awareness across the neuroscience community that the replicability of findings on the relationship between brain activity and cognitive phenomena can be improved by conducting studies with high statistical power that adhere to well-defined and standardized analysis pipelines. Inspired by efforts from the psychological sciences, and...

There is growing awareness across the neuroscience community that the replicability of findings on the relationship between brain activity and cognitive phenomena can be improved by conducting studies with high statistical power that adhere to well-defined and standardised analysis pipelines. Inspired by efforts from the psychological sciences, and...

Previous studies investigated the relationship between facial asymmetry, perceived attractiveness and peoples' traits. The diversity of results might be due to methodological issues and poor standardization between asymmetry scoring methods. We evaluate two traditional scoring methods, the Horizontal Angular Asymmetry (HAA) and the Horizontal Fluct...

Previous studies investigated the relationship between facial asymmetry, perceived attractiveness and peoples' traits. The diversity of results might be due to methodological issues and poor standardization between asymmetry scoring methods. We evaluate two traditional scoring methods, the Horizontal Angular Asymmetry (HAA) and the Horizontal Fluct...

As we identify with characters on screen, we simulate their emotions and thoughts. This is accompanied by physiological changes such as galvanic skin response (GSR), an indicator for emotional arousal, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), referring to vagal activity. We investigated whether the presence of a cinema audience affects these psychop...

[This corrects the article on p. 250 in vol. 11, PMID: 29326567.].

Digit ratio (2D:4D) and facial width-to-height ratio (WHR) are supposedly static indicators of testosterone exposition during prenatal and pubertal lifetime, respectively. Both measures have been linked to aggressive and assertive behavior in laboratory economic games, as well as in real world scenarios. Most of the research-often limited to male s...

Facial expressions of anger and fear have been seen to elicit avoidance behavior in the perceiver due to their negative valence. However, recent research uncovered discrepancies regarding these immediate motivational implications of fear and anger, suggesting that not all negative emotions trigger avoidance to a comparable extent. To clarify those...

Based on a large individual differences study, Bö ckler, Tusche, and Singer aimed to develop and psychometrically evaluate measurement procedures that capture individual differences in multiple facets of human prosociality. Bö ckler et al. claimed that they identified four reliable and method-independent subcomponents of human prosociality: altruis...

The ability to perceive and infer the meaning of facial expressions has been considered a critical component of emotional intelligence being essential for successful social functioning: Longitudinal findings suggest that the ability to recognize emotion cues is related to positive social interactions. Moreover, pronounced recognition abilities for...

The rejection of unfair offers in the ultimatum game (UG) indicates negative reciprocity. The model of strong reciprocity claims that negative reciprocity reflects prosociality since the rejecting individual is sacrificing resources in order to punish unfair behavior. However, a recent study found that the rejection rate of unfair offers is linked...

Das Konzept der interpersonellen Fähigkeiten bezieht sich auf Leistungsaufgaben der sozialen Kognition. Diese Aufgaben messen die Fähigkeiten Gesichter zu erkennen und sich diese zu merken sowie Emotionen zu erkennen und diese auszudrücken. Ziel dieser Dissertation war die Untersuchung des Einflusses von interpersonellen Fähigkeiten auf soziale Ent...

Face cognition performance is related to individual differences in cognitive subprocesses, as reflected in the amplitudes and latencies of event-related brain potentials (ERPs; Herzmann, Kunina, Sommer, & Wilhelm, 2010). In order to replicate and extend these findings, 110 participants were tested on a comprehensive task battery measuring face cogn...

The ability to process facial expressions of emotions has been considered a critical component of emotional intelligence that is essential for successful social functioning: Longitudinal findings suggest that the ability to detect and label emotion cues is related to positive social interactions and the recognition abilities for at least some emoti...

BOTH EMOTION AND REWARD ARE PRIMARY MODULATORS OF COGNITION: emotional word content enhances word processing, and reward expectancy similarly amplifies cognitive processing from the perceptual up to the executive control level. Here, we investigate how these primary regulators of cognition interact. We studied how the anticipation of gain or loss m...