Author: luebeckbabylab

Sarah Jessen has been awarded a Heisenberg grant by the German Research Foundation. More infos on what this means for our research here to come soon!

In her new study, Pauline Petereit from the Cognitive Neuroscience Group is looking at how adults respond to social rejection. You can find all the details here:

Petereit, P., Jessen, S., Goregliad Fjaellingsdal, T., & Krämer, U.M. (2022). Social Context and Rejection Expectations Modulate Neural and Behavioral Responses to Social Feedback. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 34(5): 823–845.

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.

First results from our project on the impact of maternal odor on emotion processing in infancy are out!

Testing 7-month-olds in an EEG paradigm, we found that infants at this age show a reduced fear response when they can smell their mother. This suggests that maternal odor might be a strong enough signal to make the baby feel safe and reduce their need to pay increased attention to potential threats in the environment. We also found that breastfeeding might have a similar effect – while babies who were not breastfed any more showed the expected attentional response to fearful faces, this response was absent in breastfed babies.

Jessen, S. (2020). Maternal odor reduces the neural response to fearful faces in human infants. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 45, 100858.

The safety of our participants, their family and our lab members is our top priority.

Therefore we strictly follow the safety guidelines for measurements developed by the University of Lübeck in times of Corona.

Specifically, this means:

• All measurements at the lab take place following the current 2G+ guidelines, meaning that all adults coming to the lab must either be fully vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 and additionally provide a current official COVID-19 test result unless they have received a booster shot. We will check this upon arrival in the lab. All lab members are also fully vaccinated and boostered.
• On the day before the measurement, we will contact you by phone to go through a specific checklist to make sure no participant shows any potential symptoms associated with COVID-19. We will go through the same list again upon arrival in the lab.
• All lab members wear FFP2-masks at all times when in contact with participant, and we also ask parents to wear an FFP2-mask.
• All rooms are well ventilated and all materials are disinfected regularly.
• We ask you to bring your own toys. Currently we are unable to provide toys for your infant because of hygienic standards.
• If possible, one parent only should come with the infant; in particular, please don’t bring any other persons who are not members of your household along (hence, second parent and siblings are okay).

If you decide to participate in our experiment, we will discuss these guidelines again in detail on the phone and address any further questions you might have.

Our new review article discussing the current state of research on unconscious face processing in infancy was just accepted!

Jessen, S., & Grossmann, T. (in press). The developmental origins of subliminal face processing. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. 

In a new study in adult participants conducted by our collaborators in Maastricht, we investigated the role of early visual cortices for the processing of facial trustworthiness. To that end, processing in early visual cortices in adults was interrupted using so-called trans-cranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Even when TMS was applied, participants showed comparable behavioural judgements of trustworthiness, suggesting that at least some aspects of facial trustworthiness can be processed without having to rely on early visual areas. Further information can be found here Janssens, S.E.W., Sack, A.T., Jessen, S., & de Graaf, T. (2020). Can processing of face trustworthiness bypass early visual cortex? A transcranial magnetic stimulation study. Neuropsychologia, 137.