Vanessa von Kortzfleisch Institute of Neuro- and Behavioural Biology Department of Behavioural Biology Badestraße 13 D-48149 Münster Phone: +49 (0) 251/83 21769 Fax.: +49 (0) 251/83 23896 E-mail: v_vonk01(at)uni-muenster.de → Website

Joined OCC in 2017

Research Project

The reproducibility crisis is questioning the credibility of scientific results. A cause, rather than a cure for poor reproducibility of experimental findings, could be the high standardisation to homogenous experimental conditions. The results are limited to the specific experimental background in which the experiment is conducted. This is assumed to decrease the external validity and to lead to poor reproducibility across experiments and laboratories. Instead, introducing variation into a single experiment in a systematic and controlled way, referred to as systematic heterogenisation, may reflect the inevitably occurring variation between experiments and laboratories and thus improve reproducibility.
My research interest focuses on the identification and validation of a practicable and feasible heterogenisation strategy to improve the reproducibility of research findings in behavioural phenotyping studies. (DFG, RI 2488/3-1)

PhD Committee

Prof. Dr. S. Helene Richter (Department of Behavioural Biology, University of Münster)
Prof. Dr. Norbert Sachser (Department of Behavioural Biology, University of Münster)
Prof. Dr. Matthias Gamer (Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg)

Publications

von Kortzfleisch, V.T., Karp, N.A., Palme, R. et al. Improving reproducibility in animal research by splitting the study population into several ‘mini-experiments’. Sci Rep 10, 16579 (2020)

von Kortzfleisch,VT; Kästner, N; Prange,L; Kaiser,S; Sachser, N; Richter, SH (2019): Have I been here before? Complex interactions of age and test experience modulate the results of behavioural tests. Behavioural Brain Research 367: 143-148.

Bodden, C; von Kortzfleisch, VT; Karwinkel, F; Kaiser, S; Sachser, N; Richter, SH (2019): Heterogenising study samples across testing time improves reproducibility of behavioural data. Scientific Reports 9: 8247.

Krakenberg, V; von Kortzfleisch, VT; Kaiser, S; Sachser, N; Richter, SH (2019): Differential effects of serotonin transporter genotype on anxiety-like behavior and cognitive judgment bias in mice. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 13: 263.

Conference Contributions

von Kortzfleisch, V., Kästner, N., Prange, L., Kaiser, S., Sachser, N., Richter, S.H. (2017). Have I been here before? – Effects of repeated testing on the results of behavioural tests. Poster Presentation at the 35th International Ethological Conference (Behaviour 2017), Estoril, Portugal.

CV