Falko Mecklenbrauck
Institute of Psychology

Fliednerstraße 21
48149 Münster

T: +49 (0) 251/83 34131
f_meck01@uni-muenster.de

Joined OCC in 2021

PhD Committee

Prof. Dr. Ricarda Schubotz, University of Muenster, Germany
Prof. Dr. Joachim Groß, University of Muenster, Germany
Dr. Moritz F. N. Wurm, University of Trento, Italy

Research Project

Not only the world around us consist of a multitude of nested and non-nested hierarchical structures, but also a brain can be described in the ways of structural and functional hierarchies. Therefore, it has been theorized that the neural processing of hierarchical stimuli also behaves in a hierarchical manner. Evidence from cytoarchitectural and frequency analysis studies as well as various theories of frontal lobe functions proposed an anterior-posterior hierarchy of processing steps. However, the question remains, which organizational principle structures the stimuli hierarchically. A promising approach we want to focus on in this PhD project is the temporal persistence of stimuli. The structural backbone of this temporal hierarchy might be constructed by the rich club organization of the cerebral network. Following this idea, a hierarchically higher thus more stable processing near a rich club hub and a hierarchically lower, more transient processing closer to more peripheral nodes, builds an axis of “chronoarchitecture” which offers a possibly very general theory of the information processing. Moreover, this rich-core-periphery-axis in the human brain could also explain the anterior-posterior hierarchy that has been assumed previously. This PhD project will address this relation of hierarchical stimuli, their temporal persistence, and the underlying neural organization. Therefore, we will combine function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and graph theoretical analyses to connect the functional processes to the network architecture.

CV