Thomas Fangmeier

University Medical Center Freiburg · Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy

The Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale-Revised (RAADS-R) demonstrated excellent results in its original study, with a sensitivity of 97% and a specificity of 100% (Ritvo et al. in J Autism Dev Disord 41:1076–1089, 2011). As a result, it was included in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines (Recommendations | Au...

Introduction We investigated the prosodic perception of uncertainty cues in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) compared to neurotypical adults (NTC). Method We used articulatory synthetic speech to express uncertainty in a human-machine scenario by varying the three acoustic cues pause, intonation, and hesitation. Twenty-eight adults with...

There exists little empirical evidence helping clinicians to select the most effective treatment for individual patients with persistent depressive disorder (PDD). This study identifies and characterizes subgroups of patients with PDD who are likely to benefit more from an acute treatment with psychotherapy than from pharmacotherapy and vice versa....

Background For relapse prevention in depression, conventional mindfulness programs such as the mindfulness-based cognitive therapy proved to be useful. However, early life trauma is a risk factor for having adverse experiences during meditation. Thus, for this patient group mindfulness skills are often difficult to learn and may be facilitated by u...

The excitatory‐inhibitory imbalance hypothesis postulates dysregulation of the gamma‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glutamate (Glu) neurotransmitter systems as a common underlying deficit in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Previous studies suggest an important role of these systems in the pathophysiology of ASD, including a study of...

Background Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a chronic neurodevelopmental condition with a prevalence rate above 1%, characterized by deficits in social communication and interaction; restrictive, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities; and a preference for sameness and routines. The majority of adult ASD patients suffer from com...

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a chronic neurodevelopmental condition with a prevalence rate above 1%, characterized by deficits in social communication and interaction, restrictive, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests or activities as well as a preference for sameness and routines. The majority of adult ASD patients suffer fr...

Background: Childhood maltreatment (CM) predicted poorer outcomes in acute depression treatment with CBT, IPT and Supportive Psychotherapy (SP). The Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) fared well in patients with chronic depression and CM during acute treatment, yet there is a considerable lack of empirical evidence for lo...

Background: Depressive disorders are among the leading causes of sick leave and long-term work incapacity in most modern countries. Work related stress is described by patients as the most common context of depression. It is vital to know what types of treatments are effective in improving work related problems and occupational health. However, the...

Hintergrund: Menschen im Autismus-Spektrum (AS) erleben soziale Interaktionen different. Erwachsene mit hochfunktionalem Autismus (HFA) sind sich ihrer sozialen Schwierigkeiten bewusst, stehen unter gesellschaftlichem Anpassungsdruck, auch im Freizeitbereich. Es fehlt an spezifischen Freizeitangeboten. Diese können soziale Partizipation fördern und...

Objectives: A recent trial comparing Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) and supportive psychotherapy in chronic depression found CBASP to be more effective in treating depressive symptoms. We aimed to evaluate adverse events that occurred during this trial. Materials and method: A randomized trial of chronically depres...

In this paper we present a perception study on the role of disfluent speech in forms of prosodic cues of uncertainty in question-answering situations. In our scenario the answer to each question was modeled by varying three prosodic cues: pause, intonation, and hesitation. The utterances were generated by means of an articulatory speech synthesizer...

Background: Evidence on the long-term efficacy of psychotherapeutic approaches for chronic depression is scarce. Objective: To evaluate the effects of the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) compared to Supportive Psychotherapy (SP) 1 year and 2 years after treatment termination. Methods: In this study, we present 1-...

Using a schema-theoretical perspective in the field of moral cognition, we assessed response behavior of adolescent (n = 15) and adult (n = 22) individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in comparison with adolescent (n = 22) and adult (n = 22) neurotypically developed controls. We conceptualized the Intuitive Moral Reasoning Test—in five mora...

Previous studies on cortical volume and thickness measures in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show inconsistent results. We acquired structural magnetic resonance images of 30 individuals with ASD and individually matched controls and extracted surface-based and deformation-based morphometry measures. All participants had an IQ>100. Neither surface...

Background: Adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience challenges in participating in the labour market and struggle to achieve and maintain appropriate professional positions, possibly due to impairments of communication and social interaction. Studies have shown high rates of unemployment as well as evidence of inadequate employment....

Received: March 03, 2017 Accepted: April 29, 2017 Published online: September 14, 2017 Issue release date: October 2017

Objective: White matter (WM) alterations have been reported in children and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In particular, impaired connectivity of limbic structures may be related to social deficits. Heterogeneous findings could be explained in terms of differences in sample characteristics and methodology. In this context, non-syndro...

Childhood maltreatment (CM) has been indicated as a predictor of a differential response to antidepressant treatment with psychotherapy compared to medication. In this secondary analysis, we investigated whether the presence of CM results in a differential indication for the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) or escitalop...

Importance: Chronic depression is a highly prevalent and disabling disorder. There is a recognized need to assess the value of long-term disorder-specific psychotherapy. Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) compared with that of nonspecific supportive psychotherapy (SP). Design...

Among multiple etiological factors of depressive disorders, childhood maltreatment (CM) gains increasing attention as it confers susceptibility for depression and predisposes to chronicity. CM assumedly inhibits social-cognitive development, entailing interactional problems as observed in chronic depression (CD), especially in affective theory of m...

Previous studies concerning the volumes of the amygdala and the hippocampus in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show inconsistent results. We acquired magnetic resonance images of 30 individuals with ASD and individually matched controls. All participants had an IQ>100 to increase the likelihood of including non-syndromal forms of ASD. Manually defi...

The only treatment specifically developed for chronic depression, the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP), is based amongst others on the hypothesis that chronically depressed patients (CD) show considerable deficits of affective theory of mind (ToM) capabilities. Data are scarce, however, and it remains unclear if ToM def...

A specific psychotherapy for chronic depression, the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP), was compared to escitalopram (ESC). Sixty patients with chronic major depression were randomized to 'CBASP' (22 sessions) or 'ESC plus clinical management' (ESC/CM) at two treatment sites. The primary outcome measure was the score on...

Background: Based on clinical experience there is a discrepancy between the educational records and vocational performance in patients with high functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Method: In order to assess psychosocial and vocational specificities of adult ASD patients we analyzed the demographic and hospital data of consecutively diagnos...

Molecular Psychiatry publishes work aimed at elucidating biological mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders and their treatment

Over the last few years, awareness of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in adults has increased. The precise etiology of ASD is still unresolved. Animal research, genetic and postmortem studies suggest that the glutamate (Glu) system has an important role, possibly related to a cybernetic imbalance between neuronal excitation and inhibition. To clarif...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by deficits in social cognition and competence, communication, highly circumscribed interests and a strong desire for routines. Besides, there are specific abnormalities in perception and language. Typical symptoms are already present in early childhood. Traditionally autism has been regarded as a sev...

Reasoning about inference problems that allow for multiple interpretations requires maintaining intermediate representations that, if necessary, may be reconsidered at a later stage of the solution process. In that respect we describe the process of annotating premises in spatial relational reasoning that allows for the derivation of alternative re...

A computational model of spatial relational reasoning implemented in the ACT-R cognitive architecture allows for the simulation of a wide range of behavioral data in the context of both determinate and indeterminate deductive spatial reasoning tasks. In that respect the presented study bridges the gap between results of previous work that investiga...

In den letzten Jahren hat das wissenschaftliche Interesse am neuropsychiatrischen Störungsbild des Asperger-Syndroms (AS) stark zugenommen. Therapeutische Maßnahmen wie Einzel- und Gruppentherapie werden in Deutschland zumeist bei Kindern und Jugendlichen angeboten, für Erwachsene sind diese jedoch kaum vorhanden und umfassende Konzepte fehlen. Vol...

There is an increase in awareness in professionals that the Asperger syndrome (AS) in adulthood is associated with specific problems and burdens which may well differ from those in childhood and adolescence. The core symptoms of AS generally persist into adulthood, however in contrast to childhood and adolescence there is no specific support system...

Cognitive modeling aims more and more to explain, predict and integrate behavioral data with brain activations found in fMRI studies. In this article we analyze transitive inferences (e.g. A is left of B and B is left of C then A is left of C) during the spatial reasoning processes. Behavioral findings suggest that reasoners tend to construct a men...

In the following we present a cognitive model and a visual world experiment to test a fundamental hypothesis derived from the mental model approach: the assumption that special relational reasoning relies on a mental model manipulation device responsible for model construction, inspection and variation. We will provide evidence for a direct linking...

We report an fMRI experiment on deductive reasoning with acoustically presented problems. Twelve volunteers received problems in which an acoustic stimulus came from the left or the right of another stimulus. The participants then heard a third stimulus coming from the left or the right of one of the proceeding stimuli. Their task was to determine...

In recent years a lot of research has been done in order to determine factors of complexity in spatial relational reasoning, like the number of models, the wording of conclusion or the influence of relational complexity. But research so far focused on affirmative statements only, i. e. negated expressions have not yet been investigated. In spatial...

According to the mental models theory, humans reason by constructing, inspecting, and validating mental models of the state of affairs described in the premises. We present a formal framework describing all three phases and testing new predictions about the construction principle humans normally use and about the deduction process itself – the mode...

Deductive reasoning is fundamental to science, human culture, and the solution of problems in daily life. It starts with premises and yields a logically necessary conclusion that is not explicit in the premises. Here we investigated the neurocognitive processes underlying logical thinking with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. We...

Nowadays, medical imaging procedures provide a great variety of data obtained with different modalities. To offer a deeper insight into this da ta the simultaneous visualiza- tion of these images, not regarding their source, must be provided. One example is the field of functional brain imaging, where the activation of br ain regions during cogniti...

The goal of this study was to investigate the neurocognitive processes of mental imagery in deductive reasoning. Behavioral studies yielded four sorts of verbal relations: (1) visuospatial relations that are easy to envisage both visually and spatially; (2) visual relations that are easy to envisage visually but hard to envisage spatially; (3) spat...

The neuronal processes underlying reasoning and the related working memory subsystems were examined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Twelve volunteers solved relational reasoning problems which either supported a single (determinate) or several alternative solutions (indeterminate). In a second condition, participants maintained t...

Various cognitive theories aim to explain human deductive reasoning: (1) mental logic theories claim syntactic language-based proofs of derivation, (2) the mental model theory proposes cognitive processes of constructing and manipulating spatially organized mental models, and (3) imagery theories postulate that such abilities are based on visual me...

Various cognitive theories aim to explain human deductive reasoning: (1) mental logic theories claim syntactic language-based proofs of derivation, (2) the mental model theory proposes cognitive processes of constructing and manipulating spatially organized mental models, and (3) imagery theories postulate that such abilities are based on visual me...

One of the major controversies in cognitive neuroscience is whether the primary visual cortex and nearby areas are involved in visual mental imagery. In an fMRI study we examined the brain activity of 10 healthy subjects under different task conditions: in the perception condition subjects saw complex geometrical shapes and had to decide whether ot...

Humans have an impressive ability to solve even computation-ally complex problems. Limited cognitive processing capa-bilities, however, impede an exhaustive search of the problem space. Thus, planning problems of the same size may require a different cognitive effort. Formal complexity aspects are inher-ent to a problem and set computational limits...

Reasoning difficulty for items in IQ-tests is generally deter-mined empirically: The item difficulty is measured by the number of reasoners who are able to solve the problem. Al-though this method has proven successful, (nearly all IQ-Tests are designed this way) – it is desirable to have an inherent for-mal measure reflecting the reasoning complex...