We congratulate Dr. Svea Schröder on successfully defending her thesis "Neural Correlates and Dynamics of Attention, Inhibition, and Working Memory Storage" at the Institute of Psychology. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Niko Busch, Prof. Dr. Ricarda Schubotz and Dr. Maximilian Bruchmann.
Summer and Venture Camps at the Coburg
During two weeks in July 2023, two combined summer and adventure camps took place at the Coburg in Münster, just like last year. The camps were organized by the German Alpine Club (DAV) together with the Otto-Creutzfeldt Centrum (OCC) and were sponsored by the city of Münster and the DJK Sportstiftung.
This year, for the first time, it was an integrative camp with a total of 30 children in each of the two weeks, with 10 of these children from each of two wards of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of the University Clinics in Münster. The children were able to climb on a climbing or bouldering wall, ride a lift truck to a height of about 10 meters, or even immerse themselves in virtual realities using VR. In doing so, they could face various daredevils, such as confronting spiders, thunderstorms, dark places or stepping onto a free-standing observation plank on a skyscraper. The goal of the camp was to have fun and enjoy playing together as well as to strengthen the children's self-efficacy in passing the dares. The children were enthusiastic about the integrative camp and it was enormously gratifying to see how many more dares the children were eventually willing to take than they had initially thought themselves capable of. More integrative camps are already being planned for next year 2024.
We congratulate Dr. Sophie Siestrup on successfully defending her thesis "The Influence of Mnemonic Prediction Errors on Brain Activity and Episodic Memory - a Perspective on Memory Modification" at the Institute of Psychology. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Ricarda Schubotz, Prof. Dr. Pienie Zwitserlood and Prof. Dr. Sen Cheng.
We congratulate Dr. Elio Balestrieri on successfully defending his thesis "The multi-faceted impact of alpha oscillations on perceptual decision making" at the Institute of Psychology. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Niko Busch, Prof. Dr. Markus Lappe and Prof. Dr. Joachim Groß.
In our OCC PhD Program we welcome Marius Boeltzig. The title of his project is “Learning from quantified episodic prediction errors: Individual biases in gist revision”, under the direct supervision of Prof. Dr. Ricarda Schubotz. The project is supervised by Prof. Dr. Kristina Liefke and Dr. Inês Bramão, Lund Univerity, Sweden.
| Upcoming Talk
Talk by Prof. Patrizia Fattori, University of Bologna
Our next speakers in the OCC Colloquium Series in the summer semester 2023 is Prof. Patrizia Fattori from the University of Bologna (I)
Title: The superior parietal cortex in human and non-human primates
Time: June 14th, 2023 (Wed.), 4:15 p.m. Location: Department of Psychology, Fliednerstr. 21, Lecture Hall 119
We congratulate Dr. René Michel on successfully defending his thesis "A psychophysical approach to rhythmic attentional sampling" at the Institute of Psychology. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Niko Busch, Prof. Dr. Markus Lappe and Prof. Dr. Laura Dugué.
We congratulate Dr. Thomas Kroker on successfully defending his thesis "How transcranial direct current stimulation of the
ventromedial prefrontal cortex affects cognitive biases and reward processing- behavioral and neuroimaging evidence" at the Institute of Psychology. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Markus Junghöfer, Prof. Dr. Ricarda Schubotz and apl. Prof. Dr. Jens Bölte.
In our OCC PhD Program we welcome Nina Liedtke. The title of her project is “Learning from quantified episodic prediction errors: Individual biases in gist revision”, under the direct supervision of Prof. Dr. Ricarda Schubotz. The project is supervised by OCC members Prof. Dr. Joachim Groß and Prof. Dr. Kristina Liefke.
Our next speakers in the OCC Colloquium Series in the summer semester 2023 is Dr. Govert Hoogland from the Maastricht University (NL)
Time: May 24, 2023 (Wed.), 4:15 p.m.
Location: Institut für Physiologie I, Robert-Koch- Straße 27A, 48149, seminar room 403 (4th floor)
| OCC Retreat 2023
Talks by OCC PhD Students
The OCC Retreat 2023 will be held at the Institute of Sport and Exercise Sciences Lecture Hall LEO 21, Leonardo Campus 17 on June 1st. The OCC PhD students present the current state of their projects in twenty-minute talks each followed by 10 minutes of discussion (OCC Retreat 2023 program). In the evening, of course the traditional OCC BBQ will be held after the presentations. We are looking forward to interesting presentations, lively discussions and interdisciplinary discourse.
Relationships between physical health and cognition and effects of multimodal exercise/cognitive interventions in healthy senior and patients with cardiovascular diseases
The next speaker in the OCC Colloquium Series in the summer semester 2023 is Prof. Louis Bherer from the University of Montréal, Canada
Herr Tie and his teaching unit "Wir sind Hirnforscher!"
After the pupils of the Peter-Wust-Schule in Münster became early stage brain researchers through the teaching unit „Wir sind Hirnforscher!“ designed by the Hertie Foundation, Herr Tie is now starting at the Idaschule in Münster. The OCC offers the teaching material for the 2-week project including the robot „Herr Tie“ to primary and secondary schools in Münster. The robot can move around the room, avoiding obstacles on its own, and he even can change direction at the children's verbal command. The project is completed with a question-and-answer session about the brain with OCC members and PhD students. Interested schools and teachers can contact the OCC (occ.info@uni-muenster.de) for further information.
| Announcement
Research Perspectives 2
The "OCC Research Perspectives 2" takes part on April 24th. The invited members have the opportunity to present and discuss current and perspective research interests. This exchange offers an interesting overview of the different research foci within the OCC and gives space for exciting discussions on new projects. The event will take place at the Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis, (Malmedyweg 15, 48149 Münster) seminar room, second floor. It will start at 1 pm.
We congratulate Dr. Marlen Roehe on successfully defending her thesis "Measures and Content of Anticipation in the Brain" at the Institute of Psychology. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Ricarda Schubotz, Prof. Dr. Pienie Zwitserlood and Dr. Anoushiravan Zahedi
| Announcement
New event "Research Perspectives"
The "OCC Research Perspectives" takes part on March 14th. The invited members have the opportunity to present and discuss current and perspective research interests. This exchange offers an interesting overview of the different research foci within the OCC and gives space for exciting discussions on new projects. The event will take place at the "Multiscale Imaging Centre" (Röngtenstraße 16, 48149 Münster) from 9 to 12 am.
We congratulate Dr. Johannes Kirchner on successfully defending his thesis "Oculomotor control of saccadic eye movements during blinks" at the Institute of Psychology. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Markus Lappe, Dr. Svenja Gremmler and Assoc. Proffessor Tamara Watson (Western Sydney University).
PhD student Yvonne Buschermöhle has been elected during the OCC general assembly in November 2022 as a new member of the Executive Board. She is the new student representative and succeeds Thomas Kroker in this position, who did not seek re-election due to his upcoming graduation.
Bootstrapping Concept Formation in Small Neural Networks
Our third speaker in the OCC Colloquium Series in the winter semester 2022/23 is Prof. Dr. Minija Tamosiunaite from the Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen
Time: November 09, 2022 (Wed.), 4:15 p.m.
Location: Department of Psychology, Fliednerstraße 21, Room Lecture Hall 119
Emerging technologies to study neurobiology and behavior of navigation in insects
Our first speaker in the OCC Colloquium Series in the winter semester 2022 is Prof. Dr. Andrew Straw from the Albert-Ludwig-Universität Freiburg
Time: October 26, 2022 (Wed), 4:00 p.m.
Location: Department of Psychology, Fliednerstraße 21, Lecture Hall Fl 119
OCC Retreat 2022
Talks by OCC PhD Students
This year's OCC Retreat was held at the Institute of Sport and Exercise Sciences on September 26th. The OCC PhD students presented the current state of their projects in twenty-minute talks each followed by 10 minutes of discussion. Again, the diversity of the covered topics within the field of cognitive and behavioural neuroscience was impressive (complete program). In the evening on Monday OCC members and PhD students had the traditional OCC BBQ with a lot of interesting discussions and interdisciplinary discourse.
| Venture camp 2022
Venture for Science
Researchers from the Otto Creutzfeldt Center investigated the positive aspects of children's successful involvement with adventure. In the OCC Venture Camp 2022 elementary school students faced different challenges during their summer vacation, while the researchers measured the children's experienced fear by means of questionnaires and increased heart rates. For example, the children went up to a height of 7 meters with a lift truck. In another challenge, courage was required to look through VR goggles, where the children experienced a virtual thunderstorm, sat in a room with virtual spiders or rode a virtual elevator to a platform of a skyscraper to look down from there.
"Children increasingly have fewer opportunities to take risks in their everyday lives or at school," says Prof. Dr. Markus Junghöfer, who is the scientific director of the venture camp together with PD Dr. Marc de Lussanet. "This minimizes the risk of accidents, for example in school sports, but at the same time deprives children of many opportunities to learn successful strategies and self-confidence in dealing with scary situations.”
Even though the evaluation of the data is just beginning now, the children's feedback shows that the learned mastery of dares led to a significant reduction in the experienced anxiety and was experienced very positively. The long-term goal of the OCC researchers is now to be able to offer Venture Camps to all children as part of school field trips in Münster and to study their prevention of anxiety disorders in children in even greater detail.
| Announcement
Mark the date
Upcoming OCC Lab Rotation on fMRI
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and especially functional MRI is one of the most commonly applied methods in neuroscience. This lab rotation will offer insight into the work with (f)MRI. The participants will get to know the procedures in preprocessing and analyzing fMRI data, gain experience in the processing of structural data, and will be able to experience an MRI measurement first hand. In the end participants can (hopefully) walk away with a lot of new knowledge about the method (f)MRI in neuroscience as well as with a little 3D-printed model of their own brain.
The lab rotation is available for around six OCC PhD students and will take place from 04.10. – 10.10.2022. If you are interested to take part, please contact Svenja Gremmler.
Measuring similarity of photographs for investigating the format of visual memories
Our last speakers in the OCC Colloquium Series in the summer semester 2022 are Dr. Filip Děchtěrenko and Dr. Jiří Lukavský from the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague
We congratulate Dr. Torge Dellert on successfully defending his thesis "Neural correlates of consciousness in visual and auditory perception" at the Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Thomas Straube, Prof. Dr. Jens Bölte und Dr. Maximilian Bruchmann.
With Marit Praetz we welcome the newest member in our OCC PhD Program. Marit Praetz says about her research project: "Insect navigation is widely studied in bees and ants and neuronal circuits and motifs are established for a part of these navigation strategies. Since working with fast flying organisms still is a methodological challenge, my PhD project will focus on locomotion of Drosophila larvae." The project is supervised by OCC members Prof. Dr. Christian Klämbt and Prof. Dr. Benjamin Risse. The PhD Committee is completed by Dr. Gerit Linneweber.
| Announcement
OCC Neuroscience Colloquium
The new semester has started and we look forward to welcoming five outstanding speakers to the Neuroscience Colloquium of the Otto Creutzfeldt Center:
June 15th 2022, 3 p.m. s.t., Prof. Benedetto de Martino from UCL, invited by Thomas Kroker
June 29th 2022, 4 p.m.: Prof. Barbara Webb from University of Edinburgh, invited by Prof. Benjamin Risse
July 6th 2022, 4 p.m.: Prof. Constance Royden from College of the Holy Cross, invited by Anna Hülemeyer
July 13th 2022, 4 p.m.: Dr. Filip Děchtěrenko and Dr. Jiří Lukavský from the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, invited by Prof. Niko Busch
In our OCC PhD Program we welcome Eleni Nikalexi. The title of her project is “Biomarkers for the ictogenesis of Absence seizures – The role of cortical 5-9Hz oscillations”, under the direct supervision of Dr. Annika Lüttjohann. The project is supervised by OCC members Prof. Dr. Thomas Budde and Prof. Dr. Thomas Seidenbecher. The PhD Committee is completed by Prof. Dr. Joachim Kurtz.
Announcement
New OCC member - Prof. Dr. Christian Klämbt
We welcome Prof. Dr. Christian Klämbt from the Institute of Neuro- and Behavioral Biology as a new member of the Otto Creutzfeldt Center in 2022.
Prof. Dr. Chrstian Klämbt works on questions about
Formation and function of the Drosophila blood-brain barrier.
Function of glial cells in modulating neuronal conductance speed and ephaptic coupling.
We welcome Dr. Insa Schloßmacher from the Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience as a new member of the Otto Creutzfeldt Center in 2022.
In our OCC PhD Program we welcome Rosari Naveena Selvan. In her research she is focused on to investigate the cognitive architecture of action perception and how the brain understands the cues in action sequences for prediction for taking turns in such joint actions using fMRI, EEG & Eye-Tracking. The project is supervised by OCC member Prof. Dr. Ricarda Schubotz. The PhD Committee is completed by Prof. Dr. Florentin Wörgötter (University of Göttingen) and OCC member Prof. Dr. Markus Lappe.
