Dr. Sophie Siestrup

post doc
Institut für Psychologie
Fliednerstraße 21
D-48149 Münster
room Fl 310 b
phone: +49 (0) 251 / 83 34131

Academic CV

              scince 2023
              post-doctoral at the Institute for Psychology, University of Münster,
              Lab for Biological Psychology (Prof. Dr. Ricarda I. Schubotz)

2019 - 2023

Research associate and doctoral student at the Institute of Psychology, University of Münster,
Biological psychology group (Prof. Dr. Ricarda I. Schubotz)
2019
Research associate at the at the Institute for Neuro- and Behavioural Biology,
Department of Behavioural Biology (Prof. Dr. Helene Richter)
2017 – 2018
Student assistant at the Institute for Neuro- and Behavioural Biology,
Department of Behavioural Biology
2016 – 2019
MSc Biosciences, University of Münster
Master thesis: „Effect of affect? Validating a touchscreen-based cognitive judgment bias test for laboratory mice“
2013 – 2016
BSc Biosciences, University of Münster

Academic Interest

Neural basics of episodic memory
Memory updating

Publications

Mecklenbrauck F., Gruber, M., Siestrup, S., Zahedi, A., Grotegerd, D., Mauritz, M., Trempler, I., Dannlowski, U., Schubotz R.I. (2023). The Significance of Structural Rich Club Hubs for the Processing of Hierarchical Stimuli. Human Brain Mapping 2023;1–28, doi.org/10.1002/hbm.26543

Siestrup S., Schubotz R.I. (2023). Minor Changes Change Memories: FMRI and Behavioral Reflections of Episodic Prediction Errors. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 35(11), 1823–1845. doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_02047

Siestrup S., Jainta B., Cheng S., Schubotz R.I. (2022) Solidity meets surprise: Cerebral and behavioral effects of learning from episodic prediction errors. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 35:2, pp. 291–313. doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01948

Siestrup, S., Jainta., B., El-Sourani, N., Trempler, I., Wurm, M. F., Wolf, O. T., Cheng, S., & Schubotz, R. I. (2022) What happened when? Cerebral processing of modified structure and content in episodic cueing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 34(7):1287-1305. doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01862

Jainta, B., Siestrup, S., El-Sourani, N., Trempler, I., Wurm, M.F., Werning, M., Cheng, S., Schubotz, R.I. (2021) Seeing what I did (not): Cerebral and behavioral effects of agency and perspective on episodic memory re-activation. Front. Behav. Neurosci. 15:793115. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2021.793115

Melotti, L., Siestrup, S., Peng, M., Vitali, V., Dowling, D., von Kortzfleisch, V. T., … Richter, S. H. (2021). Individuality, as well as genotype, affects characteristics and temporal consistency of courtship songs in male mice. Animal Behaviour, 180, 179–196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2021.08.003

Krakenberg, V., Siestrup, S., Palme, R., Kaiser, S., Sachser, N., Richter, S.H., (2020) Effects of different social experiences on emotional state in mice. Scientific Reports (2020) 10:15255 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-71994-9

Bodden, C; Siestrup, S; Palme, R; Kaiser, S; Sachser, N; Richter, SH (2018): Evidence-based severity assessment: Impact of repeated versus single open-field testing on welfare in C57BL/6J mice. Behavioural Brain Research 336: 261-268.

Conference Contributions

Siestrup, S., & Schubotz, R. I (2023, July). Upon the relevance of episodic prediction errors: Influence on brain response and memory. Poster at the Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM). Montréal, Canada.

Siestrup, S., El-Sourani, N., Jainta, B., Trempler, I., Wolf, O. T., Cheng, S., & Schubotz, R. I. (2022, August – September). The influence of structure and content modification in episodic cueing on brain activity and memory. Talk at the 22nd Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, Lille, France.

Siestrup, S., Jainta, B., El-Sourani, N., Trempler, I., Wolf, Oliver T., Cheng, S., & Schubotz, R. I (2022, June). Structure and content modifications in episodic cueing: impact on brain activity and memory. Poster at the Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM). Glasgow, Scotland (virtual conference).

Siestrup, S., Jainta, B., Trempler, I., & Schubotz, R. I (2021, March). Investigating the neural substrates of episodic memory updating based on new sequential and semantic information – evidence from an fMRI study. Poster (“short presentation“) at the 63. Conference of Experimental Psychologists (TeaP). Ulm, Germany (virtual conference).

Siestrup, S., Jainta, B., Trempler, I., & Schubotz, R. I (2021, February). Structure and content expectation violation in episodic memory updating – evidence from an fMRI study. Talk at the Generative Episodic Memory: Interdisciplinary perspectives from neuroscience, psychology and philosophy 2021 (GEM). Bochum, Germany (virtual conference).

Project

'Alternative facts' - How the brain warrants stable and flexible predictions from faithful and modified memories of a person's true past

In this project we aim to distinguish sequential expectations from non-sequential expectations that are driven by a cued episodic retrieval.

The basis for prediction is memory. From this perspective, memory is not autotelic, but should be optimized to serve the anticipation of upcoming events and the planning of action. This optimization entails updating when the world has truly changed. In the current project, we will trigger the recall of episodic memories either with regard to sequential expectations (based on the episodic memory trace) or with regard to non-sequential expectations (based on semantic information). In a first step, participants will be videotaped while performing and observing everyday actions. Subsequently, three experiments will be conducted using BOLD-sensitive functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to assess the cerebral basis of episodic expectation, surprise (information-theoretical: surprisal), and re-consolidation during presentation of these action videos. We employ a set of novel experimental factors concerning the episodes’ mnemonic solidity (retrieval times and consolidation) and experiential quality (self-perspective and self-performance) to test their impact on sequential and object-semantic surprise. This approach is motivated by the question as to which conditions render the memory of a truly experienced episode more or less susceptible to later modification of its spatiotemporal structure or its object-semantic content. Moreover, we systematically compare the conditions for the presence of memory updating effects due to reconsolidation separately for sequential structure and object-semantic content. Behavioral analyses will be combined with BOLD fMRI contrast, representational similarity, and graph theoretical analyses to specifically determine the role of hippocampal and selected cortical areas in stable and flexible episodic memory.

This project gets funded by the German Research Foundation (SCHU1439-10-1)