Who we are // University of Oldenburg

Lena Pinkert [representative] - Biological Psychology Lab

Perhaps you have already noticed that some older people have trouble walking and talking at the same time. This means they stop when they want to say something and only continue walking afterwards. People with neurological diseases, such as Parkinson's, also experience difficulties when trying to do two things at once. With my research, I aim to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to discover which mechanisms in the brain cause older people to struggle with doing two things at once and how this might potentially be improved with the administration of medication.

Stephanie Rosemann [substitute] – Biological Psychology Lab

My research interests are compensation- and adaptation mechanisms in age-related hearing loss and tinnitus. For that aim, I use several brain imaging methods in order to identify neural changes, along with neuropsychological tests covering attention, working memory or cognitive flexibility. I am also highly interested in the relationship between hearing loss, listening effort and audiovisual perception. The second focus of my research deals with effects of hearing aid fitting.

Franziska Kiene – Ambulatory Assessment in Psychology

My research is about cognitive abilities in elderly people and how these change with aging as well as degenerative diseases. For my research, I use neuropsychological test procedures, such as memory and attention tests. In particular, I am interested in the subjective perspective of the elderly people and I am developing a questionnaire to assess self-perceived cognitive decline.

Thorge Haupt – Neurophysiology of everyday life

What fascinates me are brain signals and how they can be understood. In particular, investigating how the brain processes sounds in daily life. This is both challenging from a technical and analytical standpoint. In my research I focus on the analytical side and develop methods that allow us to understand how the brain reacts to different sounds and how that is influenced by other factors, such as mood.

Anja Lindig – Psychological Methods and Statistics

I am an enthusiastic scientist and psychologist with a particular interest in topics related to communication. I studied neuropsychology and neuroscience and spent several years working as a psycho-oncologist supporting patients with cancer. Since the end of 2017, I have been conducting research on shared decision-making and person-centered healthcare. I am particularly interested in topics related to women's health—pregnancy, abortion, childbirth, and endometriosis. Through my studies, I aim to place the values, preferences, and wishes of patients at the center of healthcare, thereby promoting individualized and needs-based care.
I also enjoy working collaboratively with patients and caregivers in my projects and try to communicate the results of my work in ways that are understandable to laypeople.

Lara Papin – Neuropsychology Lab

I am studying signatures of gait in healthy individuals and Parkinson's disease patients. To record brain activity and movement patterns of people walking outdoors, I use mobile electroencephalography (EEG) and motion sensors. In particular, I am interested in the interaction of movement and cognition in daily life. Therefore, I ask people participating in my experiments to perform dual tasks in which, they are asked to respond to certain sounds and ignore others while walking at the same time. One goal is the comparison of healthy individuals with Parkinson's patients.

Mica Pec - Biological Psychology Lab

Can you think of a time you struggled to follow a friend’s words in a noisy coffee shop? The chatter and clinking dishes make it hard to hear, and despite focusing, you still miss parts of the conversation? The effort might feel draining. For many, especially older adults, this is more than an occasional frustration, it can be a daily challenge.

My research explores how the brain and body respond to these difficult listening situations, particularly in older adults with age-related hearing loss. By analyzing brain activity using fNIRS and pupil changes, I aim to uncover how listening effort affects speech understanding in noisy environments with hearing aid users.

Melanie Klapprott – Neuropsychology Lab

My research is about effects of sports on the brain and cognitive performance - and, how to measure these effects. Therefore, I use tests that measure memory and how well people can focus on certain things, and mobile electroencephalography (EEG). Like that, I can compare my participants' test results and brain activity before and after a bout of sports. In particular, I'm interested in technologies and analysis methods that allow us to measure EEG during various kinds of sports, like for example swimming or running.

Sophie Paape – Neuropsychology Lab

Changes in walking and speech patterns are among the earliest indicators of declining cognitive abilities. In my research, I use small motion sensors worn discreetly behind the ear to continuously measure these subtle changes in the everyday lives of older adults. I focus especially on situations where people walk and talk simultaneously—so-called dual-task situations—because they offer sensitive clues to cognitive impairments. The goal of my work is to use these movement patterns as digital biomarkers to help detect emerging cognitive issues earlier and improve diagnostics.

Brinda Valsaraj - Biological Psychology Lab

Since COVID-19, we shifted a lot to online meetings and conferences. I’m interested in what happens in the brain of our partner and us during these online conversations and tasks of making decisions. I’m trying to see if you are in ‘sync’ with your partner during these times. For this I work with an interdisciplinary group of experts, in Psychology at the Biopsychology Lab in Oldenburg, in Computer Science at the Cognitive Systems lab in Bremen and in Economics at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Karlsruhe within the KD² School PhD program. We try to understand the changes in brain activity using fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging), and heart rate measurements while they talk and solve the tasks together.

Foroogh Razavi - Experimental Psychology

Inhibitory control - the ability to suppress automatic, impulsive or inappropriate reactions - is very important for many everyday tasks. As we get older, this ability often declines, which can make it difficult to react quickly and appropriately in certain situations or to suppress habits. People with Parkinson's in particular often have difficulties with such tasks. In my project, we are investigating whether inhibitory control can be improved in healthy older people and Parkinson's patients by modulating their brain activity with non-invasive brain stimulation.

Motahari Delbari - Neuropsychology Lab

My research uses a combination of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and electroencephalography (EEG) to study how brain networks respond to external perturbation. By applying magnetic pulses and recording the brain’s immediate electrical responses, cortical excitability and connectivity can be directly measured. Ultimately, this work aims to advance our understanding of brain network function and lay the groundwork for personalized neuromodulation strategies in clinical and rehabilitation contexts.

Christiane Thiel – Biological Psychology Lab

We use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate how the brain manages to pay attention or remember, particularly in challenging real-life situations, such as following a conversation with multiple speakers. We are also interested in how these processes change in various conditions, including hearing loss and neurological disorders and aim to enhance cognitive performance through neuromodulation techniques.

Mandy Roheger – Ambulatory Assessment in Psychology

We investigate cognition and behavior in older people and in clinical populations (e.g. people with Alzheimer's dementia or Parkinson's disease) in an outpatient setting. Our research also focuses on outpatient non-pharmacological interventions (e.g. cognitive training) for the prevention of cognitive decline. We want to record cognition and behavior in people's everyday lives in order to better understand and improve outpatient neuropsychological diagnostics and integrate effective non-pharmacological interventions into patients' everyday lives.

Andrea Hildebrandt – Psychological Methods and Statistics

Psychology, cognitive neuroscience and health sciences require complex multivariate analysis methods to adequately study typical and atypical human behavior and experience, including their neural correlates. I contribute to the development of such methods and to robust and replicable research. Furthermore, I am interested in individual differences in neurosensory processes, cognition, emotion and personality, as well as their interplay.

Former Members

Silvia Korte [former representative] – Neurophysiology of everyday life

Have you ever noticed how some sounds, like an approaching car, instantly grab your attention, while others seem to fade into the background? What's fascinating is that whether we find a sound relevant, pleasant, or even annoying depends on many different things. It's not just about the sound itself, but also about where we are, who we're with, and what we're doing. In short: Our evaluation is highly individual.

In my PhD project, I'm diving deep into the individual perception of sounds in everyday life, using mobile Electroencephalography. I want to get a realistic picture of how our brains deal with the sounds we encounter every day to better understand how we interact with our environment.

Ann-Kathrin Knak – Psychological Methods and Statistics & Big Data in medicine

Even months after a COVID-19 infection some people are still severely restricted in their everyday lives. For example, they suffer from exhaustion, pain, shortness of breath or difficulty concentrating. The symptoms vary greatly from person to person and can change over time. I would like to find out why varying complaints improve or worsen in different people. I focus particularly on neurocognitive symptoms, for example difficulties with attention, memory or finding words. The results are supposed to lead to a better understanding of this new disease and provide ideas for therapeutic approaches.

Nadine Jacobsen – Neuropsychology Lab

I am interested in the interaction between movement and cognition in everyday life. To do this, I use mobile electroencephalography, which allows me to record brain waves as people move outside the lab. This allows me to see, for example, which brain waves occur during walking, during the processing of simple cognitive tasks, or even during the formation of memories. Because these data are susceptible to interference, they are heavily pre-processed. I am also investigating the influence of this pre-processing on the results and developing quality metrics.

Sreekari Vogeti – Experimental Psychology Lab

Hearing loss is common and hearing solutions that are currently available are not satisfactory for all users. Therefore, many researchers are working on improving existing solutions and developing new ones. I am investigating whether a low intensity current (transcranial alternating current stimulation) that is applied to the scalp can help us to hear better. This project is a part of the Hearing4all cluster of excellence Hearing4all.

Giulia Angonese – Psychological Methods and Statistics

I am interested in the relationship between hearing abilities in everyday life and psychological variables including personality, stress and mood. To uncover these complex relationships, we conduct mobile studies and explore our data with advanced statistical analyses. Together with other researchers in the Hearing4All Cluster, we will use this information to develop a mobile app for the care and diagnosis of hearing loss.

Mareike Daeglau – Neuropsychology Lab

My research interests lie in investigating the influence of contextual factors on perception and learning. I am particularly interested in how we can communicate effectively with each other despite distracting background noise and the role of social factors such as sympathy. In my studies, I measure brain activity in audiovisual, virtual environments to improve attention and understanding of speech. In addition, I have investigated the effects of sleep and distraction on motor imagery, a technique in which movements are only imagined and not executed and used in rehabilitation, among other things. By using mobile technologies, I aim to make my research findings transferable to people's everyday lives.

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