Year: 2021

We not only do lots of exciting baby research – the second big part of our job is teaching at the University of Lübeck. For her course in Social Psychology, Sarah Jessen has just won the annual teaching award of the University of Lübeck. Huge thanks to the University and of course to all the students who participated in the course!

You can find further information on the awards of the University in the following official press release (unfortunately only in German):

https://www.uni-luebeck.de/aktuelles/nachricht/artikel/preisverleihungsfeier-1.html

In our newest publication, we discuss and describe how a recent approach to data analysis, namely neural tracking, can be applied to infant EEG data. In most of our studies, we use a different approach called event-related potentials (ERPs), which works quite well but requires the baby to watch the same picture (or listen to the same sound) over and over again. Obviously, this starts to get boring very quickly. Using neural tracking, we can analyze the baby’s brain responses to a constantly changing signal; listening to a story, watching a cartoon, or observing other people interacting in real life. Using this approach, we can therefore design experiments that are much more exciting and at the same time much closer to natural situations.

Further information and all the mathematical details can be found here:

Jessen, S., Obleser, J., & Tune, S. (in press).  Neural Tracking in Infants – an Analytical Tool for Multisensory Social Processing in Development, Dev Cogn Neurosci

Our PhD student Bernadette Hippmann published a new article in Human Brain Mapping. In the study, she tested adult participants in an fMRI paradigm, investigating the neural connectivity behind executive control and the influence of reward vs. punishment. The full article can be found here:

Hippmann, B., Tzvi, E., Göttlich, M., Weiblen, R., Münte, T., & Jessen, S. (2021). Effective connectivity underlying reward-based executive control. Human Brain Mapping.

Measurements and testing in the Babylab still aren’t back to normal due to the impact of the pandemic, but we are nevertheless busy writing and analyzing data. Have a look at the commentary that just came out in Psychological Science, in which we in collaboration with several other researchers discuss entrainment and infant EEG data.

Keitel, C., Obleser, J, Jessen, S. & Henry, M. (2021). Frequency-Specific Effects in Infant Electroencephalograms Do Not Require Entrained Neural Oscillations: A Commentary on Köster et al. (2019). Psychological Science, 1-6.