Notger G Mueller

• MD
• Principal Investigator at Universität Potsdam

The study aims to identify the most appropriate cognitive skills and tests to assess cognitive performance in esports players. There is a lack of consensus on which skills are necessary for success in esports and which assessments are appropriate to assess these skills. This study included 51 esports coaches aged 31.82 ± 6.38 years and an average o...

Background/Objectives: Older adults with mild cognitive impairment often exhibit reduced postural control and increased fall risk. As fall-related injuries consume substantial healthcare resources, the development of fall-preventive interventions is of public health relevance. This study aims to investigate the effects of a six-month dance interven...

Although in recent years, there have been many studies to determine the cognitive performance of athletes, there are significant differences in the methodological approaches of these studies. Therefore, this methodology-focused systematic review aims to analyze the application methods of cognitive test studies with athletes and to provide standard...

Background: Temporal lobe epilepsy is the most common pharmaco-resistant type of epilepsy. The chance of obtaining seizure freedom after resective surgery in pharmaco-resistant mesial temporal lobe patients (mTLE) is significantly higher compared to pharmaceutical treatment (at least 50–60% compared to less than 15%). However, some factors (e.g., c...

The motoric cognitive risk syndrome (MCR) is a novel and clinically relevant pre-dementia syndrome indicating a higher dementia risk (e.g., for Alzheimer's disease). Given that MCR prevalence is unknown in Germany, we conducted a cross-sectional study, in which 208 participants from Germany aged 50 and 82 years answered an online survey including q...

Background: About 65 million people worldwide are affected by epilepsy, with temporal lobe epilepsy being the most common type resistant to drugs and often requiring surgical treatment. Although open surgical approaches, such as temporal lobectomy, have been the method of choice for decades, minimally invasive MRgLITT has demonstrated promising res...

In recent years, organised and competitive video gaming, esports, has gained enormous popularity in many parts of the world, contributing to the growing professionalisation of this sports branch. To become or remain a professional esports player, individuals practice video gaming for several hours a day while remaining in a sitting posture which ma...

Background Digital technologies can play an important role in improving the limited accessibility of healthcare services in rural regions (e.g., via remote assessment). However, whether remote fitness assessments (RFA) of selected physical and cognitive fitness parameters are feasible both in younger and older persons and whether they can reproduce...

The benefits of learning a motor skill extend to improved task-specific cognitive abilities. The mechanistic underpinnings of this motor-cognition relationship potentially rely on overlapping neural resources involved in both processes, an assumption lacking causal evidence. We hypothesize that interfering with prefrontal networks would inhibit con...

Background: Preserving health and physical fitness is critical to ensure independent living across the lifespan. Lower levels of physical fitness are associated with age-related cognitive decline and a higher prevalence of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Thus, this study investigates the influence of a six-month dance intervention on selected meas...

There is evidence that complex relationships exist between motor functions, brain structure, and cognitive functions, particularly in the aging population. However, whether such relationships observed in older adults could extend to young adults remains to be elucidated. Thus, the current study addressed this gap in the literature by investigating...

The neurotrophic growth factor brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) plays a crucial role in various neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia and depression. BDNF has been proposed as a potential biomarker for diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring therapy. Understanding the factors influencing BDNF lev...

A healthy lifestyle can be an important prerequisite to prevent or at least delay the onset of dementia. However, the large number of physically inactive adults underscores the need for developing and evaluating intervention approaches aimed at improving adherence to a physically active lifestyle. In this regard, hybrid physical training, which usu...

Background: Preserving health and physical fitness is critical to ensure independent living across the lifespan. Lower levels of physical fitness are associated with age-related cognitive decline and a higher prevalence of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Thus, this study investigates the influence of a six-month dance intervention on selected meas...

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a crucial mediator of neuronal plasticity. Here, we investigated the effects of controlled normobaric hypoxia (NH) combined with physical inactivity on BDNF blood levels and executive functions. A total of 25 healthy adults (25.8 ± 3.3 years, 15 female) were analyzed in a randomized controlled cross-over...

: Background: Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a crucial mediator of neuronal plasticity. Here, we investigated the effects of controlled normobaric hypoxia (NH) combined with physical inactivity on BDNF blood levels and executive functions. Methods: Twenty-five healthy adults (25.8±3.3 years, 15 female) were analyzed in a randomized, co...

Higher levels of physical activity are known to benefit aspects of brain health across the lifespan. However, the role of sedentary behavior (SB) is less well understood. In this review we summarize and discuss evidence on the role of SB on brain health (including cognitive performance, structural or functional brain measures, and dementia risk) fo...

The benefits of learning a motor skill extend to improved task-specific cognitive abilities. The mechanistic underpinnings of this motor-cognition relationship potentially rely on overlapping neural resources involved in both processes, an assumption lacking causal evidence. We hypothesize that interfering with prefrontal networks would affect conc...

UNSTRUCTURED A healthy lifestyle can be an important prerequisite to prevent or at least delay the onset of dementia. However, the large number of physically inactive adults underscores the need for developing and evaluating intervention approaches aimed at improving adherence to a physically active lifestyle. In this regard, hybrid physical traini...

Background The benefits of learning a motor skill extend to improved task-specific cognitive abilities. The mechanistic underpinnings of this motor-cognition relationship potentially rely on overlapping neural resources involved in both processes, an assumption lacking causal evidence. Objectives We hypothesize that interfering with prefrontal net...

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) allows for a reliable assessment of oxygenated blood flow in relevant brain regions. Recent advancements in immersive virtual reality (VR)-based technology have generated many new possibilities for its application, such as in stroke rehabilitation. In this study, we asked whether there is a difference i...

Background: 24-h movement behavior (24-HMB) guidelines suggest that children and adolescents should limit screen time (ST), get an adequate amount of sleep (SL), and engage in a sufficient amount of physical activity (PA) to ensure optimal health. However, it is not fully understood how adherence to these 24-HMB guidelines apply specifically to vis...

Background: The Canadian 24-hour movement behavior (24-HMB) guidelines recommend an adequate level of physical activity (PA), a limited amount of screen time (ST), and a sufficient sleep duration (SLP) to promote the healthy development of children. Although the positive effects of adhering to the 24-HMB guidelines have been established for severa...

It is well-documented in the literature that high levels of regular physical activity (PA), low levels of sedentary behavior (SB), and high levels of cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) are associated with superior cognitive functioning, especially with regard to older populations. However, concerning other age groups (e.g., preschoolers) the available...

Despite the well-established benefits of regular physical activity (PA) on health, a large proportion of the world population does not achieve the recommended level of regular PA. Although affective experiences toward PA may play a key role to foster a sustained engagement in PA, they have been largely overlooked and crudely measured in the existin...

Background: The predicted increase in adults with dementia will pose a major challenge for the German healthcare system. To mitigate this challenge, the early detection of adults with an increased risk of dementia is crucial. In this context, the concept of motoric cognitive risk (MCR) syndrome has been introduced into the English literature but i...

Background The Canadian 24-hour movement behavior (24-HMB) guidelines recommend an adequate level of physical activity (PA), a limited amount of screen time (ST), and sufficient sleep duration (SLP) to promote the healthy development of children. Although the positive effects of adhering to the 24-HMB guidelines have been established for several he...

Highlights 1. Meeting the combination of all three 24-HMB guidelines, or a combination of screen time and physical activity, was associated with reduced odds of serious difficulties in concentrating, remembering, or making decisions. 2. Meeting the combination of all three 24-HMB guidelines was associated with reduced odds of difficulties making an...

Background Patients with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) report memory deterioration and are at an increased risk of converting to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) although psychophysical testing does not reveal any cognitive deficit. Objective Here, gustatory function is investigated as a potential predictor for an increased risk of progressive cognit...

Background Given that, up to date, there is no effective strategy to treat dementia, a timely start of interventions in a prodromal stage such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is considered an important option to lower the overall societal burden. Although autonomic functions have been related to cognitive performance, both aspects have rarely be...

Introduction: There is a growing interest in understanding the neurobiological mechanisms that can explain the positive effects of physical activity and fitness on measures of cognitive performance. As eye-based measures (e.g., eye movement measures such as saccades, pupillary measures such as pupil dilation, and vascular measures such as retinal v...

Introduction Attempts to improve cognitive abilities via transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) have led to ambiguous results, likely due to the method’s susceptibility to methodological and inter-individual factors. Conventional tDCS, i.e., using an active electrode over brain areas associated with the targeted cognitive function and a sup...

Highly developed cognitive abilities are an important prerequisite for reaching elite athletic levels. This study aimed to investigate the effect of an acute sprint interval training (SIT) session on the cognitive performance of amateur and elite players. Eighteen amateur and ten elite male basketball players were included in this study. They were...

In recent years digital technologies have become a major means for providing health-related services and this trend was strongly reinforced by the current Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. As it is well-known that regular physical activity has positive effects on individual physical and mental health and thus is an important prerequisit...

Background: Evidence-based 24-hour movement behavior (24-HMB) guidelines have been developed to integrate recommendations for the time spent in the behaviors of physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep. For children and adolescents, these 24-HMB guidelines recommend a maximum of two hours of recreational screen time (as part of sedentary be...

Background: There is mounting evidence that regular physical activity is an important prerequisite for healthy cognitive aging. Consequently, the finding that almost one-third of the adult population does not reach the recommended level of regular physical activity calls for further public health actions. In this context, digital and home-based ph...

Despite the well-established benefits of regular physical activity (PA) on health, a large proportion of the population does not achieve the recommended level of regular PA. Although affective experiences toward PA may play a key role to foster a sustained engagement in PA, they have been largely overlooked and crudely measured in the existing lite...

Background Although numerous studies have examined associations between personality traits and eating disorders in females, few studies have been conducted on female exercisers. Given the high risk of disordered eating in female exercisers, this study investigated the associations between the Big Five personality traits and disordered eating in fem...

As we move through an environment, we update positions of our body relative to other objects, even when some objects temporarily or permanently leave our field of view—this ability is termed egocentric spatial updating and plays an important role in everyday life. Still, our knowledge about its representation in the brain is still scarce, with prev...

Background: Although numerous studies examined associations between personality traits and eating disorders in females, few studies have been conducted on female exercisers. Given the high risk of disordered eating in female exercisers, this study investigated the associations between the Big Five personality traits and disordered eating in female...

Der steigende Anteil älterer Menschen in der Bevölkerung geht mit einer erhöhten Prävalenz chronischer Erkrankungen einher, was das Gesundheitssystem und die Versorgung künftig vor große Herausforderungen stellt. Daher werden geeignete Maßnahmen benötigt, die ein gesundes Altern verbunden mit einer hohen Lebensqualität unterstützen. Die Fähigkeit d...

Purpose The integrated model of flow and clutch provides a multistate perspective to the optimal experiences during physical exercises. Based on this model, the Flow-Clutch Scale (FCS) was developed. The current study is the first step to test the psychometric properties of a Chinese version of the FCS (FCS–C). Method A confirmatory factor analysi...

Older adults with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) who in addition to their memory deficits also suffer from frontal-executive dysfunctions have a higher risk of developing dementia later in their lives than older adults with aMCI without executive deficits and older adults with non-amnestic MCI (naMCI). Handgrip strength (HGS) is also cor...

As we move through an environment, we update positions of our body relative to other objects, even when some objects temporarily or permanently leave our field of view—this ability is termed egocentric spatial updating and plays an important role in everyday life. Still, our knowledge about its representation in the brain is still scarce, with prev...

Dementia as one of the most prevalent diseases urges for a better understanding of the central mechanisms responsible for clinical symptoms, and necessitates improvement of actual diagnostic capabilities. The brainstem nucleus locus coeruleus (LC) is a promising target for early diagnosis because of its early structural alterations and its relation...

Background The Canadian 24-hour movement behavior (24-HMB) guidelines suggest that a limited amount of screen time use, an adequate level of physical activity (PA), and sufficient sleep duration are beneficial for ensuring and optimizing the health and quality of life (QoL) of children and adolescents. However, this topic has yet to be examined for...

In recent years digital technologies have become a major means for providing health-related services and this trend was strongly reinforced by the current Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. As it is well-known that regular physical activity has positive effects on individual physical and mental health and thus is an important prerequisit...

The interaction of physical activity and brain function with respect to what we now call successful aging has been and remains extensively studied [...]

Restrictive means to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic have not only imposed broad challenges on mental health but might also affect cognitive health. Here we asked how restriction-related changes influence cognitive performance and how age, perceived loneliness, depressiveness and affectedness by restrictions contribute to these effects....

Objectives: The medial temporal lobe, centered in hippocampus, is known to receive vestibular input for processing spatial information. Patients with medial temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) perform significantly worse on tests assessing clinical balance, path integration and rotational memory abilities. It is unknown whether a novel laser surgical proc...

Aim: We planned a cross-sectional investigation (study 1) and a longitudinal training intervention (study 2) to investigate whether recreational dancing affords greater neuroprotective effects against age-related neuromuscular junction (NMJ) degeneration compared to general fitness exercise training. Methods: In study 1, we recruited 19 older vo...

Myasthenia gravis is an autoimmune disease affecting the neuromuscular transmission and causing skeletal muscle weakness. Additionally, systemic inflammation, cognitive deficits and autonomic dysfunction have been described. However, little is known about Myasthenia gravis-related reorganisation of the brain. In this study, we thus investigated the...

Older adults with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) who in addition to their memory deficits also suffer from frontal-executive dysfunctions have a higher risk of developing dementia later in their lives than older adults with aMCI without executive deficits and older adults with non-amnestic MCI (naMCI). Handgrip strength (HGS) is also cor...

There is considerable evidence showing that an acute bout of physical exercises can improve cognitive performance, but the optimal exercise characteristics (e.g., exercise type and exercise intensity) remain elusive. In this regard, there is a gap in the literature to which extent sprint interval training (SIT) can enhance cognitive performance. Th...

Myasthenia gravis is an autoimmune disease affecting neuromuscular transmission and causing skeletal muscle weakness. Additionally, systemic inflammation, cognitive deficits and autonomic dysfunction have been described. However, little is known about myasthenia gravis-related reorganization of the brain. In this study, we thus investigated the str...

Purpose The objectives of this study were to examine the psychometric properties of the Uncertainty Stress Scale (USS) and to compare the usefulness of two versions of the scale (USS-4 and USS-10) among a large community-based sample of Chinese adults. Participants and Methods The Uncertainty Stress Scale was validated in 904 community residents (...

The growing number of elderly people in the population is accompanied by an increased prevalence of chronic diseases (e.g. dementia), which will confront the healthcare system with major challenges in the future. Therefore, appropriate interventions are needed to support healthy aging combined with a high quality of life. The potential of the adult...

Objectives: In this study, based on the known vestibulo-hippocampal connections, we asked whether mild chronic vestibulopathy leads only to vestibular-related deficits or whether there are effects on hippocampal function, structure, and cognition in general. In more detail, we assessed whether chronic vestibulopathy leads to (a) deficits in vestibu...

Sleep problems can be caused by psychological stress but are also related to cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. Improving lifestyle behaviors, such as good sleep hygiene, can help to counteract the negative effects of neurodegenerative diseases and to improve quality of life. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to investigate...

Background Current research indicates a positive impact of physical activity on healthy ageing, on brain plasticity and on the risk for dementia. Furthermore, several epidemiological, cross‐sectional and interventional studies have shown that cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with cognitive performance, especially regarding executive function...

The growing number of elderly people in the population is accompanied by an increased prevalence of chronic diseases (e. g. dementia) which will confront the healthcare system with major challenges in the future. Therefore, appropriate interventions are needed to support healthy aging combined with a high quality of life. In a longitudinal study wi...

Our goal was to investigate age-related differences in cardiac autonomic control by means of heart rate variability (HRV). For this purpose, 30 healthy older and 34 younger adults were studied during three different conditions: (i) during resting state, (ii) during the execution of two cognitive tasks, and (iii) during the subsequent recovery phase...

Background A sensitive and frequent clinical sign of a vestibular tone imbalance is the tilt of the perceived subjective visual vertical (SVV). So far there are no data yet focusing on lesion location at the cortical level as a factor for predicting compensation from tilt of SVV. Methods With modern voxelwise lesion-behavior mapping (VLBM) analysi...

Visual working memory (VWM) is an active representation enabling the manipulation of item information even in the absence of visual input. A common way to investigate VWM is to analyze the performance at later recall. This approach, however, leaves uncertainties about whether the variation of recall performance is attributable to item encoding and...

Introduction. Myasthenia gravis (MG) is an autoimmune disease affecting the peripheral nervous system and causes skeletal muscle weakness. Additionally, systemic inflammation, cognitive deficits and autonomic dysfunction have been described (Gilhus et al., 2019). Here, we investigate structural and functional brain changes in MG patients. Materials...

Objective. An increasing number of sea-level residents takes part in alpine sports such as trekking or skiing. This has inspired a growing research interest on the effects of high altitude and hypoxic conditions on cognition. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of an acute normobaric hypoxia intervention (90 minutes) on cognition in hea...

In der Universitätsklinik für Unfallchirurgie in Magdeburg wurde ein kognitives Screening-Verfahren erfolgreich implementiert. Pflegemitarbeiter beurteilen seit Februar 2020 bei allen Patienten den kognitiven Status anhand einer vierstufigen Beobachtungsskala. Die Skala erwies sich in einer orientierenden Prüfung als valide. Es zeigte sich, dass be...

The different responses of humans to an apparently equivalent stimulus are called interindividual response variability. This phenomenon has gained more and more attention in research in recent years. The research field of exercise-cognition has also taken up this topic, as shown by a growing number of studies published in the past decade. In this p...

Background: Episodic memory (EM) is particularly sensitive to pathological conditions and aging. In a neurocognitive context, the paired-associate learning (PAL) paradigm, which requires participants to learn and recall associations between stimuli, has been used to measure EM. The present study aimed to explore whether functional near-infrared spe...

Working memory (WM) performance depends on the ability to extract relevant while inhibiting irrelevant information from entering the WM storage. This distractor inhibition ability can be trained and is known to induce transfer effects on WM performance. Here we asked whether transfer on WM can be boosted by transcranial direct current stimulation (...

Physical training is considered as a low-cost intervention to generate cardioprotective benefits and to promote physical and mental health, while reducing the severity of acute respiratory in-fection symptoms in older adults. However, lockdown measures during COVID-19 have limited people’s opportunity to exercise regularly. The aim of this study wa...

Objectives: the current study aimed to investigate the relationship between physical activity (PA) level and inhibitory control performance and then to determine whether this association was mediated by multiple sleep parameters (i.e., subjective sleep quality, sleep duration, sleep efficiency, and sleep disturbance). Methods: 180 healthy universit...

Introduction The diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), that is, the transitory phase between normal age-related cognitive decline and dementia, remains a challenging task. It was observed that a multimodal approach (simultaneous analysis of several complementary modalities) can improve the classification accuracy. We will combine three noni...

The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between physical activity (PA) level and inhibitory control performance and then determine whether this association was mediated by multiple sleep parameters (i.e., subjective sleep quality, sleep duration, sleep efficiency, sleep disturbance). Methods. 180 healthy university students (age: 20...

Background: The COVID-19 lockdown could engender disruption to lifestyle behaviors, thus impairing mental wellbeing in the general population. This study investigated whether sociodemographic variables, changes in physical activity, and sleep quality from pre- to during lockdown were predictors of change in mental wellbeing in quarantined older ad...

Considerable evidence has been accumulated showing that an acute bout of physical exercise can improve cognitive performance but the optimal exercise characteristics (e.g., exercise type and intensity) remain elusive. In this regard, there is a gap in the literature to which extent Sprint Interval Training (SIT) can enhance cognitive performance. T...

Introduction: Cholinesterase inhibitors can enhance cognitive functions in healthy elderly and delay cognitive decline in patients with Alzheimer`s diseases (AD). However, not everyone benefits from this treatment (non-responders). Current studies show clinical meaningful improvements only in one third of AD patients treated with cholinesterase inh...

Despite a growing number of functional MRI studies reporting exercise-induced changes during cognitive processing, a systematic determination of the underlying neurobiological pathways is currently lacking. To this end, our neuroimaging meta-analysis included 20 studies and investigated the influence of physical exercise on cognition-related functi...

Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is assumed to exert beneficial effects on brain structure and executive control (EC) performance. However, empirical evidence of exercise-induced cognitive enhancement is not conclusive, and the role of CRF in younger adults is not fully understood. Here, we conducted a study in which healthy young adults took part i...