Maximilian A. Friehs

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Twente

Visuospatial working memory is essential to everyday functioning, for example, when navigating the natural world and for complex everyday tasks like driving. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is associated with visuospatial working memory and the present study is aimed at investigating the impact of activity modulation in the DLPFC on perf...

Introduction Climate change is one of the greatest threats to human life, and news about it can significantly impact mental health. Furthermore, doomscrolling, that is habitual negative consumption, may further exacerbate these effects. Understanding the associated risks and protective factors is crucial for supporting the most affected groups. How...

Background Approximately 1 in 4 children who sustain an acquired brain injury (ABI) have attention difficulties impacting education, employment, and community participation. These difficulties arise from dysfunction in attention-related brain networks, incentivising the use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Objective/Hypothesis We...

This study investigates the impact of gamification on response inhibition in a Stop-Signal Task (SST) and examines participants' gamification experience. The findings reveal that, after accounting for approach- and avoidance-motivation as well as impulsiveness, higher immersion is associated with impaired response inhibition. This effect could be a...

Introduction: This study examines the phenomenon of "doomscrolling," the habitual consumption of negative news, and its association with mental health, particularly in the context of climate change. Building upon prior research linking doomscrolling to negative mental health outcomes, we explore the potential for climate change news, a pervasive an...

As the gaming industry advances, it seeks increased immersion. Concurrently, recent advancements in speech recognition substantially enhanced its accuracy, creating opportunities for speech-based interactions in gameplay. Integrating speech into single-player games with non-player characters (NPCs) introduces a new social dimension. Yet, like toxic...

Introduction During the first years of the pandemic, COVID-19 forced governments worldwide to take drastic measures to reduce the spread of the virus. Some of these measures included mandatory confinements, constant use of masks, and social distancing. Despite these measures being mandatory in many countries and the abundance of evidence on their e...

Background Few gamified cognitive tasks are subjected to rigorous examination of psychometric properties, despite their use in experimental and clinical settings. Even small manipulations to cognitive tasks require extensive research to understand their effects. Objective This study aims to investigate how game elements can affect the reliability...

Aims This study aims to explore community perspectives on enhancer usage in competitive gaming and esports, focusing on the perception of fairness and concerns about various potential performance enhancers. Methods We conducted both qualitative and quantitative surveys to understand the competitive gaming community's opinions on different types of...

The application of virtual reality to the study of conversation and social interaction is a relatively new field of study. While the affordances of VR in the domain compared to traditional methods are promising, the current state of the field is plagued by a lack of methodological standards and shared understanding of how design features of the imm...

False memories during testimony are an enormous challenge for criminal trials. Exposure to post-event misinformation can lead to inadvertent creation of false memories, known as the misinformation effect. We investigated anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) during recall testing to enhance a...

The ability to inhibit an already initiated response is crucial for navigating the environment. However, it is unclear which characteristics make stop-signals more likely to be processed efficiently. In three consecutive studies, we demonstrate that stop-signal modality and location are key factors that influence reactive response inhibition. Study...

People are prone to forming false memories for fictitious events described in fake news stories. In this preregistered study, we hypothesized that the formation of false memories may be promoted when the fake news includes stereotypes that reflect positively on one’s own nationality or negatively on another nationality. We exposed German and Irish...

Stopping an already initiated action is crucial for human everyday behavior and empirical evidence points toward the prefrontal cortex playing a key role in response inhibition. Two regions that have been consistently implicated in response inhibition are the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the more superior region of the dorsolateral prefro...

BACKGROUND Few gamified cognitive tasks are subjected to rigorous examination of psychometric properties, despite their use in experimental and clinical settings. Even small manipulations to cognitive tasks require extensive research to understand their effects. OBJECTIVE This study aims to investigate how game elements can affect the reliability...

This work discusses the role of AI, its users and the hidden workers in image generation and its consequences for all agents involved in the process based on an analysis of relevant YouTube videos that describe the purpose and meaning of art.

Recent decades have seen a sharp increase in the quantity of misinformation or “fake news” available online. When people are exposed to fake news, they can come to believe in or even remember the events described in the fake stories, with potential consequences for democracy and international relations. We expected that stereotypes might affect peo...

Technological advances in speech recognition have enabled us to communicate with computers using our voice. This natural form of interaction opens up a large opportunity for video game companies to utilize it as an intuitive feature and appealing game mechanic for player-NPC interaction. While communication between two human actors comes naturally,...

Stopping an already initiated action is crucial for human everyday behavior and empirical evidence points toward the prefrontal cortex playing a key role in response inhibition. Two regions that have been consistently implicated in response inhibition are the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the more superior region of the dorsolateral prefro...

This proof-of-concept study provides an appraisal of a remotely administered gamified Stop-Signal Task (gSST) for future use in studies using child sample. Performance on the standard Stop-Signal (SST) task has been shown previously to differentiate attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder groups from controls. As is the case with the SST, it was e...

Self-Control is an important skill in everyday life when attention is automatically drawn toward certain stimuli. For instance, food stimuli automatically capture visual attention and are processed preferentially. Therefore, efficient response inhibition is crucial to refrain from careless overeating. In the present proof-of-concept study we use a...

In this manuscript we investigate the effect of cross-modal stop-signals in a response inhibition task. Report on three studies, from which we can draw two main conclusions. First, a mismatch between stop- and go-signal modality can increase reactive stopping performance, and tactile stop-signals are processed more effectively compared to visual st...

Introduction. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the most common acquired brain injury (ABI), where 16% of children sustain at least one TBI requiring medical attention, and 25-30% experience chronic problems. Attention and concentration problems are among the most common cognitive symptoms following ABI. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)...

Laboratory procedures such as the Trier Social Stress Test or the (Socially Evaluated) Cold Pressor Test have been used to investigate working memory performance under stress. Researchers so far have reported a diverse spectrum of stress effects (including the lack thereof) on working memory tasks. We conducted a systematic review of the effect acu...

Processing ambiguous situations is a constant challenge in everyday life and sensory input from different modalities needs to be integrated to form a coherent mental representation on the environment. The bouncing/streaming illusion can be studied to provide insights into the ambiguous perception and processing of multi-modal environments. In short...

This work explores perceptions of performance enhancer usage in esports. Specifically, we explored the perception of: food and food supplements; non-medical use of prescription drugs; drugs with some social acceptance (e.g. alcohol, nicotine, cannabis); drugs with lower social acceptance (e.g., psychedelics, opioids); and non-invasive brain stimula...

A rich body of research suggests that self-associated stimuli are preferentially processed and therefore responses to such stimuli are typically faster and more accurate. In addition, people have an understanding of what they consider their “Self” and where it is located, namely near the head and upper torso—further boosting the processing of self-...

One important aspect of cognitive control is the ability to stop a response in progress and motivational aspects, such as self-relevance, which may be able to influence this ability. We test the influence of self-relevance on stopping specifically if increased self-relevance enhances reactive response inhibition. We measured stopping capabilities u...

Transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) is widely used to explore the role of various cortical regions involved in a multitude of motor and cognitive processes. Recently, tES has been discussed as being able to potentially enhance performance in sports and even been suggested as a potential way of boosting performance in competitions. In this sco...

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is widely used to explore the role of various cortical regions for reactive response inhibition. In recent years, tDCS studies reported polarity-, time- and stimulation-site dependent effects on response inhibition. Given the large parameter space in which study designs, tDCS procedures and task proced...

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a form of non‐invasive brain stimulation that has been used to modulate human brain activity and cognition. One area which has not yet been extensively explored using tDCS is the generation of false memories. In this study, we combined the Deese‐Roediger‐McDermott (DRM) task with stimulation of the...

Stopping an already initiated action is crucial for human everyday behavior and empirical evidence points toward the prefrontal cortex playing a key role in response inhibition. Two regions that have been consistently implicated in response inhibition are the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the more superior region of the dorsolateral prefro...

As digital gaming has grown from a leisure activity into a competitive endeavor with college scholarships, celebrity, and large prize pools at stake, players search for ways to enhance their performance, including through coaching, training, and employing tools that yield a performance advantage. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a...

The amino acid tyrosine is the precursor of dopamine and norepinephrine and can be administered as a dietary supplement. Previous studies have demonstrated that the intake of tyrosine can enhance both working memory performance and response inhibition (e.g., Colzato et al., Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 72013; Colzato et al., Neuropsycholog...

Resolving cognitive interference is central for successful everyday cognition and behavior. The Stroop task is a classical measure of cognitive interference. In this task, participants have to resolve interference on a trial-by-trial basis and performance is also influenced by the trial history, as reflected in sequence effects. Previous neuroimagi...

The effect of stress on working memory has been traced back to a modulation of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). We investigated the effects of neuromodulation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (lDLPFC) after exposure to psychosocial stress through the Socially Evaluated Cold Pressure Test (SECPT). The hypothesis was that neuromodulation intera...

The head fake in basketball describes an action during which players gaze in one direction, but pass the ball to the opposite direction. This deception can be modeled in the lab as a kind of interference resolution task. In such tasks, the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (lDLPFC) has been shown to play a critical role. In the present study, tra...

BACKGROUND A lack in the ability to inhibit prepotent responses, or, more generally, a lack of impulse control, is associated with several disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and schizophrenia as well as general damage to the prefrontal cortex. The Stop-Signal Task (SST) is a reliable and established measure of respons...

BackgroundA lack of ability to inhibit prepotent responses, or more generally a lack of impulse control, is associated with several disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and schizophrenia as well as general damage to the prefrontal cortex. A stop-signal task (SST) is a reliable and established measure of response inhibition. Ho...

Player experience research tends to focus on immersive games that draw us into a single play session for hours; however, for casual games played on mobile devices, a pattern of brief daily interaction---called snacking ---may be most profitable for companies and most enjoyable for players. To inform the design of snacking games, we conducted a cont...

Through free choice, individuals can exert control over the environment and experience agency. Research has suggested that tailoring aspects of choice to a player's type can provide benefits; however, commercial Role Playing Games (RPGs) generally provide static opposing options from a spectrum (e.g., paragon versus renegade). To inform the design...

The n-back task is an established measure of an individual's working memory. In this task, participants have to continuously update their working memory to react to a stimulus correctly. For the verbal n-back task in particular, the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (lDLPFC) plays a key role in working memory updating and a higher activation of t...

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a noninvasive method of modulating human brain activity and potentially alters performance in cognitive tasks. Often it is assumed that effects of tDCS modulation depend on the polarity—anodal stimulation typically boost cognitive processes whereas cathodal stimulation hampers them. While most tDCS...

The stop-signal task (SST) is assumed to reliably measure response inhibition; specifically, in this task participants sometimes have to withhold a response according to the onset of a sudden cue. The response-stopping process is estimated by a stochastic model that delivers the stop-signal reaction time (SSRT; Verbruggen & Logan, 2009), that is, t...

We tend to treat the 18-55 demographic of gamers as a monolithic and homogenous group, even though the older ones witnessed the entire rise of the videogame and the younger ones were born into a world with MMORPGs. We present a cross-sectional study of 2747 crowdsourced players aged 18-55 and conduct linear regressions of age on several measures of...