Michael Falkenstein

ALA Institute

Event-related potentials (ERP), in particular P300 and MMN, have been used for decades in clinical research, but hardly in clinical practice. This chapter provides an overview of recent clinical ERP studies with P300 and MMN as primary components. Due to the (non-)availability of recent studies, this review is restricted to traumatic brain injury,...

Based on previous concepts that a distributed theta network with a central “hub” in the medial frontal cortex is critically involved in movement regulation, monitoring, and control, the present study explored the involvement of this network in error processing with advancing age in humans. For that aim, the oscillatory neurodynamics of motor theta...

Introduction The demographic change requires longer working lifetime. However, fear of job loss may lead to chronic stress whereas aging and unchallenging work may accelerate cognitive decline and early retirement. Long-time repetitive work led to impairments of cognitive functions in middle-aged and older employees, as demonstrated in a previous s...

Objective: Both cognitive and primary motor networks alter with advancing age in humans. The networks activated in response to external environmental stimuli supported by theta oscillations remain less well explored. The present study aimed to characterize the effects of aging on the functional connectivity of response-related theta networks during...

Based on previous concepts that a distributed theta network with a central 'hub' in the medial frontal cortex is critically involved in movement regulation, monitoring, and control, the present study explored the involvement of this network in error processing with advancing age in humans. For that aim, the oscillatory neurodynamics of motor theta...

It has been demonstrated that during motor responses, the activation of the motor cortical regions emerges in close association with the activation of the medial frontal cortex implicated with performance monitoring and cognitive control. The present study explored the oscillatory neurodynamics of response-related potentials during correct and erro...

strong>Editorial Driving Safety in Healthy Aging and Age-Related Diseases Michael Falkenstein ^*, Ute Brüne-CohrsALA Institute, 44805 Bochum, Germany; E-Mails: falkenstein@ala-institut.de ; Ute.Bruene-Cohrs@ruhr-uni-bochum.de * Correspondence: Michael Falkenstein; E-Mail: falkenstein@ala-institut.de Special Issue : Driving Safety in Healt...

Children's cognitive performance can be influenced by behaviors such as eating breakfast in the morning. The aim of this analysis was to investigate the mediating effects of breakfast behavior and other lifestyle habits on eye-hand coordination and attention. In a secondary analysis of the CogniDROP study, children from the 5th and 6th grade of a c...

Physical training has beneficial effects not only on physical fitness, but also on cognitive functions. The most effective way to improve cognitive functions via physical training as well as the degree to which training effects transfer to untrained cognitive functions is still unclear, however. Here, we investigated the effects of adaptive and mul...

Objectives Adequate fluid intake is essential for cognition. Our previous short-term motivational intervention study (CogniDROP I) showed that a water intake of 0.5–1.5 l in the morning had positive effects on selected parameters of cognition in schoolchildren. The aim of this CogniDROP II study was to determine whether long-term motivation also le...

Purpose Studies about effects of lunch dietary Glycemic Index (GI) on cognition of schoolchildren are scarce. Our previous CogniDo GI study found no changes of cognition in the early postprandial phase after consumption of two rice types with medium vs. high dietary GI for lunch (i.e., 45 min after starting lunch). This study investigated whether t...

In the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, wearing a face mask is mandatory again during school lessons. There are no controlled studies in children to date indicating an effect on cognitive performance from wearing face masks. In a randomized controlled trial, we analysed the influence of face masks on cognitive performance of pupils during regular schoo...

In the current Sars-CoV-2 pandemic, wearing a face mask was mandatory and is still desired during school lessons. There are no controlled studies in children to date indicating an effect on cognitive performance wearing face masks. In a randomized controlled trial, we analysed the influence of face masks on cognitive performance of pupils during re...

Background: Multi-tasking is usually impaired in older people. In multi-tasking, a fixed order of sub-tasks can improve performance by promoting a time-structured preparation of sub-tasks. How proactive control prioritizes the pre-activation or inhibition of complex tasks in older people has received no sufficient clarification so far. Objective: T...

This study investigated the relationship between different levels of physical fitness and cognitive functions in boys and girls. Schoolchildren from a comprehensive school in Germany (n = 211, 39% girls, 5th and 6th grade) attended regular or sport-focused classes with different numbers of physical education (PE) classes per week (3 vs. 5–6 h). Per...

This study investigated the relationship between different levels of physical fitness and cognitive functions in boys and girls. Schoolchildren from a comprehensive school in Germany (n = 211, 39% girls, 5th and 6th grade) attended regular or sport-focused classes with different numbers of physical education (PE) classes per week (3 vs. 5–6 h). Per...

Im Zuge der demografischen Entwicklung steigt der Anteil älterer Beschäftigter stetig an. Zudem fordert die rasante digitale Umstrukturierung der Arbeit – die durch eine hohe Dynamik und Komplexität geprägt ist – den Beschäftigten ein hohes Maß an Motivation, Lernfähigkeit und mentalen („kognitiven“) Fähigkeiten ab. Solche Fähigkeiten, die auch als...

Zusammenfassung. Mobilität ist für Ältere von zentraler Bedeutung für die Alltagsfunktionalität, mit besonderen Herausforderungen an die Verkehrssicherheit insbesondere im Falle einer demenziellen Erkrankung. Ob Menschen mit Demenz im Einzelfall noch in der Lage sind, ein Kraftfahrzeug sicher zu führen, ist abhängig von der Art und Schwere des jewe...

Moderne Arbeit benötigt Beschäftige mit hoher mentaler Fitness, die allerdings im Lauf des Lebens oft nachlässt. Dies ist weniger durch das Altern als durch Umwelt- und Lebensstilfaktoren bedingt, so dass betriebliche Maßnahmen an beiden Aspekten ansetzen sollten.

Introduction: Burnout and depression both occur with chronic work-related stress, and cognitive deficits have been found when symptom severity results in work disability. Less is known about cognitive deficits associated with milder symptoms among active workers, and few studies have examined whether cognitive deficits predict persistent burnout an...

In the 2020s, the number of the over 60s in the workforce will continue to increase. The book ‘Arbeit und Altern 2020’ (Work and Ageing 2020) takes stock of the state of knowledge on work and age and ageing, and on progress in the areas of work design and human resources. It presents academic findings, practical design models as well as company and...

Healthy aging is associated with deficits in focused and sustained attention and executive functions. However, cognitive training (CT) provides a promising method to counteract these deficits. In the present randomized controlled study, we examined to what extent CT regimes can improve attention, verbal skills, and inhibition capacities. Over a per...

Due to demographic changes, the number of older drivers is steadily increasing. Mobility is highly relevant for leading an independent life in the elderly. It largely depends on car driving, which is a complex task requiring a multitude of cognitive and motor skills vulnerable to age- related functional deterioration. The almost inevitable effects...

Cognitive training (CT) has effects on performance as well as brain measures. In most CT studies measures of brain structure and perfusion have been used, while methods based on the electroencephalogram (EEG) have been almost neglected. The first part of the chapter provides an overview about CT studies in older adults using EEG-based methods. The...

Circadian mechanisms and the sleep-wakefulness rhythms guarantee survival, adaptation, efficient action in everyday life or in emergencies and well-being. Disordered circadian processes at central and/or cellular levels, sleep disorders, and unhealthy wakefulness/sleep rhythms can impair the physiological circadian organization and result in subjec...

There is still little research examining the relationship between water consumption in school and specific cognitive performance. The aim of this cluster-randomized intervention CogniDROP trial was to investigate the short-term effects of drinking water during the morning on executive functions. The participants were from the 5th and 6th grade of a...

Intervention studies suggest an influence of breakfast dietary glycemic index (GI) on children’s cognition. The Cognition Intervention Study Dortmund-GI-I study examined whether lunch dietary GI might have short-term effects on selected cognitive parameters. A randomized crossover study was performed at a comprehensive school on 2 test days. One hu...

It has been suggested that a distributed oscillatory system in the brain operating in the theta (3.5–7 Hz) frequency range plays a major role in coordinating motor actions. The major objective of the present study was to explore the effects of human aging on the neurodynamics of motor-related EEG theta activity during correct motor response generat...

Susceptibility to interference increases with age but there is large inter-individual variability in interference control in older adults due to a number of biological and environmental factors. The present study aims at analyzing behavior and ERPs in a Stroop interference task with increasing difficulty in a sample of 246 young, middle-aged and he...

In der modernen Arbeitswelt stellt der demografische Wandel mit einer stetigen Alterung der Belegschaften Unternehmen vor neue Herausforderungen. Insbesondere die fortschreitende Digitalisierung fordert von den Beschäftigten eine hohe mentale Leistungsfähigkeit. Mit zunehmendem Alter verändern sich vor allem mentale Fähigkeiten. Wie kommen Ältere m...

Combining behavioral and electrophysiological measures, we investigated the role of memory processes for prospective memory development in three different age groups over the lifespan. We focused on age differences during intention encoding, retention and retrieval in order to assess if potential age-associated performance differences in adolescenc...

Driver distraction is one major cause of road traffic accidents. In order to avoid distraction-related accidents it is important to inhibit irrelevant stimuli and unnecessary responses to distractors and to focus on the driving task, especially when unpredictable critical events occur. Since inhibition is a cognitive function that develops until yo...

Background/objectives: Most forms of dementia are associated with progressive cognitive and noncognitive impairments that can severely affect fitness to drive. Whether safe driving is still possible in the single case, however, is often difficult to decide and may be dependent on both severity and type of the respective dementia syndrome. Particul...

The present study in the framework of the international cooperation project „Depres-sion, burnout and cognitive deficits” investigated whether healthy employees in stressful occupations who complain of depression or burnout symptoms differ from symptom free employees in self-reported state, cognitive test performance and func-tional brain activity....

Healthy aging is associated with changes in sensory, motor, cognitive, and emotional functions. Such changes depend on various factors. In particular, physical activity not only improves physical and motor but also cognitive and emotional functions. Observational (i.e., associations) and cross-sectional studies generally show a positive effect of r...

Working memory (WM) declines with increasing age. The WM capacity is often measured by means of the computerized version of the n-back task. Although the n-back task is widely used in aging research, little is known about its construct validity and specific cognitive functions involved in this task. Moreover, to date, no studies analyzed the constr...

Die moderne Arbeitswelt fordert von den Beschäftigten ein hohes Maß an Kompetenzen wie Flexibilität und Lernfähigkeit. Hierfür sind bestimmte mentale (kognitive) Fähigkeiten notwendig, die unter dem Begriff „fluide Intelligenz“ subsumiert werden. Besonders relevant sind dabei die sog. exekutiven Funktionen. Im Kontext eines ganzheitlichen betriebli...

In Anbetracht des demografischen Wandels sowie wachsenden Anforderungen in der Arbeitswelt gewinnt der Erhalt von Gesundheit und Leistungsfähigkeit der Beschäftigten zunehmend an Bedeutung. Die erhöhte berufliche Komplexität und Dynamik kann zu erhöhtem Stress führen. Ältere leiden stärker unter Stress als Jüngere, v.a. wenn sie stressempfindlich s...

Beschäftigte in der Arbeitswelt 4.0 stehen vor neuen Herausforderungen. Die Digitalisierung, Technisierung sowie erhöhte Komplexität und Arbeitsverdichtung können sich negativ auf die Gesundheit, Arbeits- und Leistungsfähigkeit von alternden Belegschaften auswirken. Das betriebliche Umfeld als Lebenswelt gilt als ein wichtiger Ort zur Beeinflussung...

With large inter-individual variability, older adults show a decline in cognitive performance in dual-task situations. Differences in attentional processes, working memory, response selection, and general speed of information processing have been discussed as potential sources of this decline and its between-subject variability. In comparison to yo...

While aging and stress are both known to affect cognitive functions, little is known on whether and how age modulates stress effects on executive functions and their neural correlates. The current study investigated the effect of acute stress on response inhibition and error processing and their underlying cortical processes in younger and older he...

Objective: Impaired response inhibition might play a role in child sexual offences. Recording of event-related potentials (ERPs) can help to clarify whether child sexual offenders (CSOs) show an altered processing of stop signals and commission errors. Methods: In the current ERP study, we investigated these processes in a Go/Nogo task on two gr...

The task-switching paradigm is a valid tool to measure age-related changes in executive functions. It allows identifying the most vulnerable cognitive control processes affected by aging. This review provides an overview about the current evidence on behavioral and electrophysiological signatures of adult age differences in task switching with a fo...

Introduction: The relationship between cognition and the ability to hear is well known. Due to changes in demographics, the number of people with sensorineural hearing loss and cognitive impairment is increasing. The aim of this study was to identify the impact of hearing rehabilitation via cochlear implantation on cognitive decline among the agin...

Working memory (WM) performance decreases with age. A promising method to improve WM is physical or cognitive training. The present randomized controlled study is aimed at evaluating the effects of different training methods on WM. A sample of 141 healthy older adults (mean age 70 years) was assigned to one of four groups: physical training, cognit...

Objective: To present first representative data on burnout measured as exhaustion in German employees. Methods: Data was taken from the Study on Mental Health at Work (n = 4,058). Computer-assisted personal interviews were conducted in 2011-2012. Multiple linear regression models were estimated to investigate the association between work-related...

Zusammenfassung Hintergrund Im Hinblick auf den demographischen Wandel der Gesellschaft gewinnen in der Hörrehabilitation neurokognitive Fähigkeiten immer mehr an Bedeutung. Fragestellung Ziel der Studie war es zu untersuchen, inwiefern eine neurokognitive Testung mittels PC-gestützter Aufgaben zur Evaluation der unterschiedlichen Bereiche der Kogn...

Moderne Arbeit fordert von den Beschäftigten ein hohes Maß an Motivation, Flexibilität und Lernfähigkeit. Hierfür sind bestimmte mentale (kognitive) Fähigkeiten notwendig, die unter dem Begriff „fluide Intelligenz “ subsumiert werden. Besonders wichtig sind hierbei die exekutiven Kontrollfunktionen. Die fluide Intelligenz und insbesondere die Kontr...

Introduction Due to demographic changes, the number of people suffering not only from dementia illness but also from hearing impairment with the need for hearing rehabilitation have increased noticeably. Even with the association between hearing, age, and cognitive decline being well known, this issue has so far not played an important role in dail...

Burnout is a syndrome occurring mainly in individuals with long-term stressful work. The main complaints are emotional exhaustion and reduced performance. Burnout also largely overlaps with depression. Both are characterized by increased incidence of infections due to dysregulation of the immune system, overexpression of pro-inflammatory cytokines...

Burnout is a pattern of complaints in individuals with emotionally demanding jobs that is often seen as a precursor of depression. One often reported symptom of burnout is cognitive decline. To analyze cognitive control and to differentiate between subclinical burnout and mild-to-moderate depression a double-blinded study was conducted that investi...

Moderne Arbeit fordert von den Beschäftigten ein hohes Maß an Motivation, Flexibilität und Lernfähigkeit. Hierfür sind bestimmte mentale (kognitive) Fähigkeiten notwendig, die unter dem Begriff „fluide Intelligenz“ subsumiert werden. Fluide Intelligenz ist wichtig für berufliche Leistung, Zufriedenheit und Gesundheit. Mit zunehmendem Alter sinkt di...

Executive functions are subject to a marked age-related decline, but have been shown to benefit from cognitive training interventions. As of yet, it is, however, still relatively unclear which neural mechanism can mediate training-related performance gains. In the present electrophysiological study, we examined the effects of multi-domain cognitive...

Verbal communication in a “cocktail-party situation” is a major challenge for the auditory system. In particular, changes in target speaker usually result in declined speech perception. Here, we investigated whether speech cues indicating a subsequent change in target speaker reduce the costs of switching in younger and older adults. We employed ev...

Recently, we reported results of a cross-sectional study investigating executive functions in dependence of aging and type of work. That study showed deficits in performance and electrophysiological activity in middle-aged workers with long-term repetitive and unchallenging work. Based on these findings, we conducted a longitudinal study that aimed...

Aging is associated with a decrease of specific sensory, cognitive, and psychomotor functions, which is paralleled by alterations of brain activity and performance in laboratory and everyday situations. Several lines of evidence show that age-related negative functional development is strongly influenced by individual genetic factors as well as lif...

This condensed review gives an overview about two methodological approaches to study the impact of physical activity on cognition in elderly, namely cross-sectional studies and randomized controlled intervention studies with pre- and post-measures. Moreover, this review includes studies investigating different types of physical activity and their r...

Cognitive training (CT) has effects on performance as well as brain measures. In most CT studies measures of brain structure and perfusion have been used, while methods based on the electroencephalogram (EEG) have been almost neglected. The first part of the chapter provides an overview about CT studies in older adults using EEG-based methods. The...

Behavioral findings suggest an inverted U-shaped pattern of prospective memory development across the lifespan. A key mechanism underlying this development is the ability to detect cues. We examined the influence of cue detection on prospective memory, combining behavioral and electrophysiological measures, in three age groups: adolescents (12–14 y...

Studies about effects of school lunch on children’s cognition are rare; two previous studies (CogniDo, CogniDo PLUS) generally found no negative effects of lunch on children’s cognitive performance at the end of lunch break (i.e. 45 min after finishing lunch), but suggested potential beneficial effects for single parameters. Therefore, the present...

Decision making in economic context is an everyday activity but its neuronal correlates are poorly understood. The present study aimed at investigating the electrophysiological brain activity during simulated purchase decisions of technical products for a lower or higher price relative to a mean price estimated in a pilot study. Expectedly, partici...

Toxoplasma gondii is one of the most widespread infections in humans. Recent studies give evidence for memory deficits in infected older adults. To investigate working memory dysfunction in infected elderly, a double-blinded electrophysiological study was conducted. 84 persons derived from a sample of 131 healthy participants with the mean age of 7...

With the increasing aging of the population, the number of older drivers is rising. Driving is a significant factor for quality of life and independence concerning social and working life. On the other hand, driving is a complex task involving visual, motor, and cognitive skills that experience age-related changes even in healthy aging. In this rev...

Erroneous behavior usually elicits a distinct pattern in neural waveforms. In particular, inspection of the concurrent recorded electroencephalograms (EEG) typically reveals a negative potential at fronto-central electrodes shortly following a response error (Ne or ERN) as well as an error-awareness-related positivity (Pe). Seemingly, the brain sig...

N-Acetyltransferase 2 (NAT2) genotype is associated with age-related declines in basic sensory hearing functions. However, the possible modulatory role of NAT2 for higher cognitive functions has not yet been studied. We tested auditory goal-directed behavior and attentional control in 120 NAT2 genotyped subjects (63-88 years), using an auditory dis...

Die Infektion mit dem neurotropen Parasiten Toxoplasma gondii ist weltweit verbreitet. In Deutschland sind rund 50 Prozent der Bevölkerung mit diesem Erreger infiziert. Dabei nimmt die Durchseuchung mit zunehmendem Lebensalter zu. Bislang wurde T. gondii vor allem durch eine Schädigung des Föten bei akuter Erstinfektion der Mutter bekannt. Es mehre...