News 2020

With Anna-Gesina Hülemeier we welcome the newest member in our OCC PhD Program. Her research focuses in with the overall theme of visual perception of optic flow and biological motion for locomotion and focuses on two major topics. The first one relates to ensemble perception mechanisms of biological motion during heading through a crowd. The second one investigates travel distance estimation through a crowded environment. The project is supervised by OCC member Prof. Dr. Markus Lappe and the PhD Committee is completed by Prof. Dr. Niko Busch and Jun.-Prof. Dr. Benjamin Risse. Welcome!

We would like to welcome Dr. Isabelle Klinkenberg in the OCC coordination team. Isabelle Klinkenberg will take over the tasks of Dr. Svenja Gremmler. Svenja Gremmler is currently on maternity leave.

The OCC is very pleased to announce our new course "introduction in data analysis with R" in the winter semester 2020/21. In the course you will learn to analyze data with the statistics program ‚R'. It is a basic course in which, in addition to understanding the structure and function of R, topics are covered such as reading in data, structuring and formatting data as well as converting simple statistical methods into ‚R'. It will take place online at Saturday the 5th and 12th of December from 9 am to 4 pm. The access codes will be sent out early by e-mail. Please register at occinfo@uni-muenster.de.

Our next speaker in the OCC Colloquium Series in the winter semester 2020/2021 is Prof. Dr. Ulrike Lüken  (Humboldt University Berlin, Germany).

• Time: November 25, 2020 (Wed), 4.15 p.m.
• Location: Online Zoom Meeting – Registration Required (occinfo@uni-muenster.de)

Auf Grund der Corona bedingten Einschränkungen musste der geplante Vortrag von Frido Mann, Honorary Fellow des von der Bundesregierung gegründeten Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, Californien, USA, an der WWU beim OCC Thementag „Wissenschaft im Dialog“ leider abgesagt werden. Im Sinne seines geplanten Vortrags “Democracy will win” hat Frido Mann im Vorfeld der US Wahlen am 3. November aber eine kurze Botschaft an das OCC gesendet, die Sie hier ansehen können.

Our first speaker in the OCC Colloquium Series in the winter semester 2020/2021 is Dr. Anna Lena Schubert  (Heidelberg University, Germany).

• Time: November 04, 2020 (Wed), 4.15 p.m.
• Location: Online Zoom Meeting – Registration Required (occinfo@uni-muenster.de)

We welcome Prof. Dr. Claudia Voelcker-Rehage from the Institute of Sport and Exercise Sciences as a new member of the Otto Creutzfeldt Center in 2020.

Prof. Dr. Claudia Voelcker-Rehage works on questions about

- Motor control and learning
- Exercise and cognition
- Health and Aging

PD Dr. Dieter F. Kutz from the Institute of Sport and Exercise Sciences is our newest member in the Otto Creutzfeldt Center. His main research areas are:

• Physiology and pathophysiology of motor systems
• Motor learning
• Senso-motor integration

Welcome!

We congratulate Dr. Insa Schlossmacher on successfully defending her thesis "Neural Correlates of consciousness and deviance processing investigated using no-report paradigms" at the Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience on Wednesday, October 7th. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Thomas Straube, apl. Prof. Dr. Jens Bölte, Dr. Maximilian Bruchmann and Prof. Dr. Joscha Kärtner.

Dr. Nina Heins has successfully defended her thesis this month. Her thesis  “The relevance of incidental and intentional action sounds for the evaluation and neural processing of actions" was supervised by Prof. Dr. Ricarda Schubotz, Prof. Dr. Pienie Zwitserlood and Prof. Dr. Dr. Markus Raab. Congratulations!

Myriam de Graaf is the newest member in our OCC PhD Program. Her research focuses on the application of artificial neural networks in the field of motor control. The project is supervised by OCC member Prof. Dr. Heiko Wagner and the PhD Committee is completed by Prof. Dr. Andreas Daffertshofer and Dr. Kim Boström. Welcome!

Dr. Viktoria Krakenberg has successfully defended her thesis this month. Her thesis  “Is the glass half full or half empty? How serotonin transporter genotype and social experiences influence cognitive judgement bias in mice" was supervised by Prof. Dr. Norbert Sachser, Prof. Dr. Helene Richter and Prof. Dr. Volker Arolt. Congratulations!

With Sophie Siestrup we welcome the newest member in our OCC PhD Program. In her research "Alternative Facts" she triggers the recall of and modify 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). The project is supervised by OCC member Prof. Dr. Ricarda Schubotz, Prof. Dr. Pienie Zwitserlood and the PhD Committee is completed by Prof. Dr. Sen Cheng.

We welcome Dr. Ima Trempler as a new member of the Otto Creutzfeldt Center in 2020. Dr. Trempler works on questions about the context effects on adaptive behavior, interoceptive predictive coding, the role of dopamine and about the predictive processing in neuropsychiatric disorders in the group of OCC member Prof. Dr. Ricarda Schubotz at the Biological Psychology at the Department of Psychology at the WWU.

We welcome JProf. Dr. Benjamin Risse as the second new member of the Otto Creutzfeldt Center in the year 2020. JProf. Risse and his team are interested in interdisciplinary research questions involving the development of novel imaging, computer vision (CV) and machine learning (ML) technologies yielding new data-driven approaches. He works at the Faculty of Mathematics & Computer Science in the Computer Science Department at the WWU.

With Niklas Stein we welcome the newest member in our OCC PhD Program. In his research he uses visual stimuli that are dependent on self-motion in virtual reality, to analyze their influence on perception and behavior. The project is supervised by OCC member Prof. Dr. Markus Lappe and the Phd Committee is completed by Prof. Dr. Frank Steinicke and the OCC member Prof Dr. Heiko Wagner.

Pupils in the Idaschule in Münster now became early stage brain researchers when they completed the teaching unit „Wir sind Hirnforscher!“ designed by the Hertie Foundation. The Hertie Foundation and the OCC offer 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 was completed with a question-and-answer session about the brain with OCC PhD students. Interested schools and teachers can contact the OCC coordinator for further information.

We welcome  Prof. Dr. Silke Jörgens as a new member of the Otto Creutzfeldt Center in 2020. Prof. Jörgens works on questions about cognition and affective disorders with neuropsychological tests in the group of OCC member Prof. Dr. Bernhard Baune at the Department of Mental Health at the University Hospital Münster.

Our next speaker in the OCC Colloquium Series in the winter semester 2019/2020 is Prof. Dr. Chadi Touma (University of Osnabrück, Germany).

• Time: January 29, 2020 (Wed), 16.15 h
• Location: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Albert-Schweitzer-Campus 1, Building A9Lecture Hall, 2nd Floor, Room 120.074

Our next speaker in the OCC Colloquium Series in the winter semester 2019/2020 is Prof. Dr. Gilles Pourtois (University of Ghent, Belgium).

• Time: January 15th, 2020 (Wed), 16.15 h
• Location: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Albert-Schweitzer-Campus 1, Building A9Lecture Hall, 2nd Floor, Room 120.074