Tina Kaffenberger

The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health · Stroke Division

Purpose Development of a freely available stroke population–specific anatomical CT/MRI atlas with a reliable normalisation pipeline for clinical CT. Methods By reviewing CT scans in suspected stroke patients and filtering the AIBL MRI database, respectively, we collected 50 normal-for-age CT and MRI scans to build a standard-resolution CT template...

This systematic review aimed to investigate timing, dose, and efficacy of upper limb intervention during the first 6 months poststroke. Three online databases were searched up to July 2020. Titles/abstracts/full-text were reviewed independently by 2 authors. Randomized and nonrandomized studies that enrolled people within the first 6 months poststr...

This study aims at providing estimates on the transmission risk of SARS-CoV-2 in schools and day-care centres. We calculated secondary attack rates (SARs) using individual-level data from state-wide mandatory notification of index cases in educational institutions, followed by contact tracing and PCR-testing of high-risk contacts. From August to De...

Background: Physical activity is beneficial in stroke prevention and recovery. Understanding activity dynamics and its effect on outcome after stroke is important to improve recommendations and develop interventions. Objectives: We examined serial changes in daily ambulatory activity (AA) averaged over 1 week in people with subacute to chronic s...

The impact of out-of-bed upright activity on outcomes in ischemic stroke patients with severe extra- and intracranial stenosis or occlusion is unknown. Using ultrasound findings from a cohort recruited to A Very Early Rehabilitation Trial (AVERT) which compared higher dose very early mobilisation (VEM) to usual care (UC), we aimed to explore the as...

Background The lack of precise estimates on transmission risk hampers rational decisions on closure of educational institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods Secondary attack rates (SARs) for schools and day-care centres were calculated using data from state-wide mandatory notification of SARS-CoV-2 index cases in educational institutions a...

Background: Low cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is a predictor of stroke risk and poor outcome poststroke. Fitness levels are rarely assessed in the acute phase and it is unclear if it is safe for stroke survivors and people with transient ischemic attack (TIA) to perform a graded exercise test to assess fitness. Objective: To determine if peopl...

Background: Improving upper limb (UL) motor recovery after stroke represents a major clinical and scientific goal. We aim to complete three systematic reviews to estimate the (1) association between time to start of UL therapy and motor recovery, (2) relative efficacy of different UL therapy approaches post-stroke and (3) cost-effectiveness of UL...

Self-worth is particularly influenced by self-appraisal, which is negatively biased in many psychiatric disorders. Positive and negative self-appraisals also shape current emotional states or even evoke defensive reactions, when they are incongruent with a subject's current state. Prior studies have mainly used externally given evaluative appraisal...

BACKGROUND: Self-referential emotions such as shame/guilt and pride provide evaluative information about persons themselves. In addition to emotional aspects, social and self-referential processes play a role in self-referential emotions. Prior studies have rather focused on comparing self-referential and other-referential processes of one valence,...

Self-referential cognitions are important for self-monitoring and self-regulation. Previous studies have addressed the neural correlates of self-referential processes in response to or related to external stimuli. We here investigated brain activity associated with a short, exclusively mental process of self-reflection in the absence of external st...

Neuroticism and extraversion are proposed personality dimensions for individual emotion processing. Neuroticism is correlated with depression and anxiety disorders, implicating a common neurobiological basis. Extraversion is rather inversely correlated with anxiety and depression. We examined neural correlates of personality in relation to depressi...

Objectives Extraversion and neuroticism are differentially correlated with affective disorders: Neuroticism is strongly correlated with depression and anxiety disorders, whereas extraversion is rather negatively correlated with anxiety disorders. Theories have implicated a common biological basis of neuroticism and affective disorders. Methods Thi...

Objectives Cognitive control of emotions by reappraisal strategies is a psychotherapeutic technique reducing emotional load and anxiety in stressful situations. A previous study in healthy subjects resulted in a top-down regulatory effect by reappraisal during the anticipation of negative and unknown cued emotional stimuli as expressed by increased...

Daily we cope with upcoming potentially disadvantageous events. Therefore, it makes sense to be prepared for the worst case. Such a 'pessimistic' bias is reflected in brain activation during emotion processing. Healthy individuals underwent functional neuroimaging while viewing emotional stimuli that were earlier cued ambiguously or unambiguously c...

The regulation of emotions is an ongoing internal process and often a challenge. Current related neural models concern the intended control of reactions towards external events, mediated by prefrontal cortex regions upon basal emotion processing as in the amygdala. Cognitive strategies to regulate emotions in the context of affective disorders or s...

Serotonergic and noradrenergic pathways are the main targets of antidepressants. Their differential effects on emotion processing-related brain activation are, however, to be further characterized. We aimed at elucidating the neural sites of action of an acute differential serotonergic and noradrenergic influence on an emotion-processing task, whic...

Preparing for potentially threatening events in the future is essential for survival. Anticipating the future to be unpleasant is also a cognitive key feature of depression. We hypothesized that 'pessimism'-related emotion processing would characterize brain activity in major depression.Method During functional magnetic resonance imaging, depressed...

Serotonergic and noradrenergic pathways are the main targets of antidepressants. Their differential effects on emotion processing-related brain activation are, however, to be further characterized. We aimed at elucidating the neural sites of action of an acute differential serotonergic and noradrenergic influence on an emotion-processing task, whic...

Leukoencephalopathy with cerebral calcifications and cysts (LCC) is a recently described, very rare entity, clinically characterized by progressive neurological deficits such as cognitive decline, epileptic seizures, pyramidal, extrapyramidal and cerebellar symptoms/signs. With the exception of two patients with adult onset, in all previously descr...

Aims: The anticipation of negative and unknown (50% positive and negative) emotional stimuli revealed in previous studies a ‘pessimistic’ attitude towards the future in a similar pattern of brain activation, and no similarity of positive and unknown (‘optimistic’) in healthy subjects (1) and patients with a major depression (2). This ‘pessimism’ co...

The emotional valence of an expected event provides the basis on which our brain develops strategies that enable us to adapt quickly and efficiently to new situations. In daily life we have to cope with upcoming potentially negative events. Therefore, we have the tendency to expect and prepare for the worst case. If so, negative stimuli after the a...

Aims: Pessimism is a main cognitive feature of major depression. Depressive Patients are characterized by a negative attitude towards themselves, the world and the future as described in Beck's cognitive triad (1). Our aim was to analyze the neural correlates of these features of cognitive processing in depression concerning the pessimistic attitud...

The quick identification of potentially threatening events is a crucial cognitive capacity to survive in a changing environment. Previous functional MRI data revealed the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the region of the left intraparietal sulcus (IPS) to be involved in the perception of emotionally negative stimuli. For assessing chronome...

Strategies of cognitive control are helpful in reducing anxiety experienced during anticipation of unpleasant or potentially unpleasant events. We investigated the associated cerebral information processing underlying the use of a specific cognitive control strategy during the anticipation of affect-laden events. Using functional magnetic resonance...

Since we do not know what future holds for us, we prepare for expected emotional events in order to deal with a pleasant or threatening environment. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense to be particularly prepared for the worst-case scenario. We were interested to evaluate whether this assumption is reflected in the central nervous info...

Background: Beck’s triad of depressive cognition comprises the negative view of the self, the world and the future. We hypothesized that the negative view of the future is reflected by a negative bias in the expectation of emotional events. In previous studies we revealed such a negative bias in the sense of a differential activation of brain regio...

Einleitung: „Selbst“-bezogene kognitive Funktionen mit ihren verschiedenen Facetten – Selbstwahrnehmung, Selbst-Abgrenzung, Selbstregulation, Selbstwert u.v.m. – sind bei vielen psychiatrischen Störungen in Mitleidenschaft gezogen. Bisherige Studien untersuchten kognitiv das Erkennen der eigenen Person sowie emotional den Selbst-Bezug von emotional...

Einleitung: Depressive Kognitionen sind unter anderem gekennzeichnet durch eine negative Erwartungshaltung gegenüber der Zukunft. Diese ist assoziiert mit Aktivierungen in emotionsverarbeitenden Hirnarealen während der Erwartung von potenziell oder sicher negativen Reizen, welche zum Teil mit dem Grad der Depressivität korrelieren (Herwig et al. 20...

Objectives Cognitive control of emotions by reappraisal strategies is a psychotherapeutic technique reducing emotional load and anxiety in stressful situations. A previous study in healthy subjects resulted in a top-down regulatory effect by reappraisal during the anticipation of negative and unknown cued emotional stimuli as expressed by increased...

Background and hypothesis – The differential influences of serotonergic and noradrenergic modulation by antidepressants are untill now poorly characterized. We analyzed the effects of an acute serotonergic and noradrenergic influence on brain activity during the perception of negative pictures. Materials and methods – 16 healthy subjects ingested i...

Einleitung: Kognitive Kontrolle durch die Anwendung von Strategien zur Neubewertung („reappraisal“) ist eine wirksame Intervention zur Angstreduktion in angstauslösenden Situationen und auch ein wichtiger Aspekt der Psychotherapie von Angststörungen. In einer vorangegangen Studie an Gesunden (Herwig et al. 2007) konnten wir zeigen, dass die Anwendu...

We do not know what future will provide. An essential strategy to cope with upcoming events of potentially or certainly unpleasant emotional impact is to perform a cognitive control of the situation. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging we examined the involved brain regions while performing a psychotherapeutic intervention for stopping n...

Einleitung: Ein zentrales kognitives Merkmal bei depressiven Patienten ist eine negative Erwartungshaltung gegenüber der Zukunft. In einer früheren Studie identifizierten wir bei gesunden Probanden Hirnareale, die inErwartung eines Ereignisses mit unbekannter emotionaler Valenz so aktiviert waren, als wäre ein sicher unangenehmes Ereignis angekündi...

Einleitung: Die Untersuchung „Selbst“-referentieller Hirnaktivität könnte helfen, „Selbst“-bezogene Symptome bei psychiatrischen Erkrankungen, wie gestörtes Selbstwert-Empfinden bis hin zu Suizidalität bei affektiven Erkrankungen oder Ich-Störungen bei Schizophrenien, auf einer pathophysiologischen Ebene besser zu verstehen. Eine Differenzierung „S...

Introduction: Since the 1950s, the monoaminergic system is the main target of antidepressant drug therapy. The places of action of these drugs are, however, poorly characterized. In particular, there are no clinical or neurobiological criteria for the selection of a more serotonergic or more noradrenergic acting antidepressant, which would be helpf...

Background and hypothesis – Depression is characterized by disturbed emotion regulation, such as exaggerated anticipation of negative outcomes in ambiguous and heightened estimation of impact of negative situations. We aimed at investigating neural correlates of cognitive control in major depression (MDD) versus healthy subjects (HCS). Materials an...

Einleitung: Die veränderte Auseinandersetzung mit sich selbst, im Sinne eines erhöhten kognitiven Fokus auf sich selbst, eines reduzierten Selbstwertgefühls oder negativer selbst-assoziierter Gedanken, ist ein häufiges Phänomen bei affektiven Störungen. Frühere Studien haben zur Untersuchung des „Selbst“ die Präsentation von Bildern der untersuchte...

Einleitung: In früheren Studien konnten wir eine „pessimistische“ Erwartungshaltung bei gesunden und depressiven Versuchsteilnehmern in Hinblick auf emotionale Ereignisse zeigen. Die damit assoziierte Hirnaktivität korrelierte signifikant mit dem Grad der Depressivität. Ein möglicher Grund für diese negative Erwartungshaltung könnte in einer veränd...

Einleitung: Die Vorbereitung auf ein emotionales Ereignis findet maßgeblich in der Antizipationsphase statt. Wir konnten zeigen, dass in Erwartung emotionaler Ereignisse unbekannter Valenz bei gesunden Probanden ein zerebrales Aktivierungsmuster vorlag, als wäre ein sicher unangenehmes Ereignis angekündigt worden (Herwig et al. 2007). Gemäß diesen...