In der Abteilung für Klinische Psychophysiologie  werden im Rahmen von Dissertationen zur Zeit unter anderem die folgenden Projekte bearbeitet:

• Reward related processing of visual food cues: neuroendocrine and stress mechanisms (siehe hier)
• Post Encoding Stress Effects on Memory Consolidation (siehe hier)
• The Concept of Flow-Experience and its Relation to Stress from the Perspectives of Psychophysiology and Organizational Psychology (siehe hier)

The cognitive processing of food cues, and especially the building up of spatial memory for food location, had played an important role in survival of mammals and human development. Hormones, like cortisol and insulin, are known to control energy homeostasis, as well as impact memory processes. The distribution of cortisol and insulin receptors in the central nervous system indicates that both hormones have the potential to affect hippocampus-related spatial memory. This dissertation project asks about such central effects of cortisol and insulin, and their interaction, taking into account the reward value of food information in healthy human.

The initial steps of this project were to develop non-verbal, startle and fMRI based methodology to assess the reward value of visual food cues. Our final aim is to implement this methodology in a pharmacological manipulation of intranasal insulin or/and oral cortisol. 

Phd Student: Diana Ferreira de Sá  Zurück zur Übersicht

Emotional stimuli tend to better remembered than neutral ones, an effect that has been attributed to attentional processes at encoding as well as enhanced consolidation of emotional stimuli following arousal. Strongly arousing situations elicit a stress response which is characterized by autonomic activation on the one hand and the release of the stress hormone cortisol on the other hand. Recently, it has been hypothesized that these two main actors of the stress response are responsible for this enhancement of memory consolidation. Studies in rodents could show that an interaction of cortisol and noradrenergic stimulation in the Amygdala and Hippocampus after learning is necessary for the modulation of memory consolidation by stress. In my current project I investigate the impact of the stress reaction in response to the Cold Pressor stress test on consolidation of emotional and socially relevant stimuli in humans, evaluating autonomic, endocrine and psychological parameters.

Phd Student: Mauro Larrá y Ramírez Link/ Zurück zur Übersicht

Flow-experience is a positive state of absorption of a person with an optimally challenging activity, resulting in highly efficient task performance. Physiological concepts explaining the flow phenomenon are largely lacking, but are of growing interest. On a theoretical basis, flow and stress have been linked using Lazarus’ transactional stress model. Here, flow is seen as part of a mechanism to cope with stress, when stress is transformed into a pleasant challenge through reappraisal (Lazarus et al., 1980; Donner and Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 1993; Ohse, 1997; Weimar; 2005). Compared to relaxation, stress induces autonomic nervous system and neuroendocrine activation. In terms of physiological arousal, we hypothesize that flow-experience is located between the two poles ‘relaxation’ and ‘stress’, following a u-shaped function of sympathetic and endocrine arousal. Further, flow should come along with decreased activation in default networks of the brain (Hamilton et al, 1984).

The knowledge about physiological processes accompanying flow can help to further understand the phenomenon itself, how flow and stress are linked and how to actively enter flow states. This knowledge is of particular interest from the perspective of organizational psychology in order to optimize work performance. Therefore, this project aims to investigate physiological processes accompanying the experience of flow and to test the proposed physiological pattern of flow-experience. 

Phd-Student: Corinna Peifer zurück zur Übersicht