Lena Maria Leeners, M.Sc.

phd student
Institut für Psychologie
Fliednerstraße 21
D-48149 Münster
room Fl 313
phone: +49 (0) 251 / 83 34097

Academic CV

Since October 2018
Doctoral researcher, Institute of Psychology (Biological Psychology), University of
Münster, Germany
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ricarda I. Schubotz

2017 – 2018
Doctoral researcher, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig,
Germany
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Katharina von Kriegstein

2014 – 2016
Master of Science in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, Maastricht University, The
Netherlands

2015 – 2016
Master thesis and research internship
“The influence of direct gaze on the mechanisms of action control”
Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany
Supervisor: PD Dr. Leonhard Schilbach

2013 – 2014
Master of Science in Health and Social Psychology, Maastricht University, The
Netherlands

2014
Master thesis and research internship
“Gender differences in fear conditioning in high-anxious adolescents“
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK
Supervisor: Dr. Kathrin Cohen Kadosh

2010 – 2013
Bachelor of Science in Psychology, Maastricht University, The Netherlands

2013
Master thesis and voluntary internship
“Malingering of mentally retarded patients within a forensic psychiatry: The merits of the Schretlen’ Malingering Scale”
Christophorusklinik Münster, Germany
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Harald Merckelbach

2012
Exchange semester in Psychology (Bachelor of Science)
University of Stellenbosch, South Africa

Publications

Schliephake, L.,Trempler, I., Roehe, M.A., Heins, N., Schubotz,R.I. (2021). Positive and negative prediction error signals to violated expectations of face and place stimuli distinctively activate FFA and PPA. NeuroImage, 236 (2021) 118028 PDF

Roehe, M.A., Kluger, D.S., Schroeder, S.C.Y., Schliephake, L.M., Boelte, J., Jacobsen, T., Schubotz., R.I. (2021). Early alpha/beta oscillations reflect the formation of face-related expectations in the brain. PLoS ONE 16(7): e0255116

Zillekens, I., Schliephake, L., Brandi, M.-L., & Schilbach, L. (2019). A look at actions: Direct gaze modulates functional connectivity of the right TPJ with an action control network. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

Kadosh, K. C., Haller, S. P., Schliephake, L., Duta, M., Scerif, G., & Lau, J. Y. (2018). Subclinically anxious adolescents do not display attention biases when processing emotional faces – An eye-tracking study. Frontiers in Psychology, 9.

Conference Contributions

Schliephake, L., Brandi, M.-L., & Schilbach, L. (April 2016). Modulation of brain activity in the inferior frontal gyrus during the generation of manual actions in a social context. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SANS) conference, New York City, USA.

Project

The interplay of positive and negative prediction error signals during expectation violations of visual stimuli

Surprising scenarios can have different behavioural and neuronal consequences depending on the violation of the expectation. On the one hand, previous research has shown that the omission of a visual stimulus results in a robust cortical response representing that missing stimulus, a so-called negative prediction error. On the other hand, a large amount of studies revealed positive prediction error signals, entailing an increased neural response that can be attributed to the experience of a surprising, unexpected stimulus. However, it still remains unclear how and when these prediction error signals co-occur. In this project, we investigate whether positive and negative prediction error signals evoked by unpredicted cross-category stimulus transitions can temporally coincide. Moreover, we seek to clarify the relationship between the effects of positive and negative predictions errors and stimulus transition effects caused by equal or unequal stimulus category presentations. We use event-related fMRI and forced-choice decision tasks in which participants have to respond to individual visual images presented in a continuous stream with sequential contingencies.