Falko Mecklenbrauck, MSC

phd student
Institut für Psychologie
Fliednerstraße 21
D-48149 Münster
room Fl 310 b
phone: +49 (0) 251 / 83 34101

Academic CV

since 2020
Researcher and doctoral student, Institute for Psychology, University of Münster, Department of Biological Psychology
2018 – 2020
M. Sc. Psychology, WWU Münster
Master thesis: Through the Eyes of Autism – Action Perception and Recognition in Autism Spectrum Condition
2018 – 2020
Student assistant at the Institute for Psychology, University of Münster, Department of Biological Psychology
2018 – 2019
Student assistant, Clinic for Neurology, EK Unna, Neuropsychology
2016 – 2020
Student assistant at the Institute for Psychology, University of Münster, Department of Statistics and Psychological Methods
2015 – 2018
B. Sc. Psychology, University of Münster
Bachelor Thesis: The Art of Deduction – The Influence of Contextual Objects in the Recognition & Interpretation of Actions

Academic Interests

Action and goal representations in the prefrontal cortex
Cortical hierarchies
Action processing in Autism Spectrum Condition

Publications

Mecklenbrauck, F., Sepulcre, J., Fehring, J., & Schubotz R. I. Decoding Cortical Chronotopy - Comparing the Influence of Different Cortical Organizational Schemes. NeuroImage (2024), in press https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2024.120914

Mecklenbrauck, F., Gruber, M., Siestrup, S., Zahedi, A., Grotegerd, D., Mauritz, M., ... & Schubotz, R. I. (2024). The significance of structural rich club hubs for the processing of hierarchical stimuli. Human Brain Mapping, 45(4), e26543. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.26543

Selvan, R. N., Cheng, M., Siestrup, S., Mecklenbrauck, F., Jainta, B., Pomp, J., ... & Schubotz, R. I. (2024). Updating predictions in a complex repertoire of actions and its neural representation. NeuroImage, 120687. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2024.120687

Trempler, I., Binder, E., Reuter, M., Plieger, T., Standke, I., Mecklenbrauck, F., ... & Schubotz, R. I. (2022). Effects of DRD2/ANKK1 and COMT Val158Met polymorphisms on stabilization against and adaptation to unexpected events. Cerebral Cortex, 32(24), 5698-5715. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhac046

Pomp, J., Heins, N., Trempler, I., Kulvicius, T., Tamosiunaite, M., Mecklenbrauck, F., ... & Schubotz, R. I. (2021). Touching events predict human action segmentation in brain and behavior. Neuroimage, 243, 118534. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118534

Conference Contributions

Mecklenbrauck, F., Sepulcre, J., & Schubotz R. I. (2024, Juni) Well, would you look at the time – Comparing the influence of different cortical organizational schemes of the temporal layout of the cortex. Poster auf dem Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM). Seoul, Südkorea.

Mecklenbrauck, F., Sepulcre, J., & Schubotz R. I. (2024, Mai) Well, would you look at the time – Comparing the influence of different cortical organizational schemes of the temporal layout of the cortex. Poster auf der 49. Jahrestagung Psychologie und Gehirn (PuG). Hamburg, Deutschland.

Mecklenbrauck, F., Gruber, M., Siestrup, S., Grotegerd, D., Mauritz, M., Zahedi, A., Trempler, I., Dannlowski, U., Schubotz, R. I. (2023, Juli) The Significance of Structural Rich Club Hubs for the Processing of Hierarchical Stimuli. Poster auf dem Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM). Montréal, Kanada.

Mecklenbrauck, F., Gruber, M., Siestrup, S., Grotegerd, D., Mauritz, M., Zahedi, A., Trempler, I., Dannlowski, U., Schubotz, R. I. (2023, März) The Significance of Structural Rich Club Hubs for the Processing of Hierarchical Stimuli. Poster auf der 65. Tagung experimentell arbeitender Psychologen (TeaP). Trier, Deutschland.

Project

Rich club “chronoarchitecture” forms the neural basis for the processing of hierarchical stimuli

Not only the world around us consist of a multitude of nested and non-nested hierarchical structures, but also our brain can be described in the ways of structural and functional hierarchies. Thus, 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 (e.g. Badre & Nee, 2018). However, the question remains, which organizational principle structures the stimuli hierarchically. A promising approach we want to focus on in project is the temporal persistence of stimuli. Areas near the top of the hierarchy are able to integrate and maintain information over a longer span of time (Koechlin & Summerfield, 2007). The structural backbone of this temporal hierarchy might be constructed by the rich club organization of the cerebral network. Following this idea, hierarchically higher thus more stable processing near a rich club hub and hierarchically lower, more transient processing closer to more peripheral nodes, could build an axis of “chronoarchitecture” (Gollo et al., 2015) which possibly offers a very general theory of information processing. 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. In the first experiment, the participants will be presented sequences of numbers, that contain hierarchical structures of different level and length. This paradigm will be applied to determine “temporal receptive windows” (Hasson et al., 2008) of different cortical areas which will then be mapped onto the furthermore identified structural network to address relation of hierarchical stimuli, their temporal persistence, and the underlying neural organization.

References
Badre, D., & Nee, D. E. (2018). Frontal Cortex and the Hierarchical Control of Behavior. In Trends in Cognitive Sciences (Vol. 22, Issue 2, pp. 170–188). Elsevier Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2017.11.005

Gollo, L. L., Zalesky, A., Matthew Hutchison, R., Van Den Heuvel, M., & Breakspear, M. (2015). Dwelling quietly in the rich club: Brain network determinants of slow cortical fluctuations. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 370(1668). https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0165

Hasson, U., Yang, E., Vallines, I., Heeger, D. J., & Rubin, N. (2008). A hierarchy of temporal receptive windows in human cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 28(10), 2539–2550. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5487-07.2008

Koechlin, E., & Summerfield, C. (2007). An information theoretical approach to prefrontal executive function. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(6), 229–235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.04.005