@phdthesis{Murali2023,
  author    = {Murali, Supriya},
  title     = {Understanding the function of spontaneous blinks by investigating internally and externally directed processes},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-28747},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-287473},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2023},
  abstract  = {Humans spontaneously blink several times a minute. These blinks are strongly modulated during various cognitive task. However, the precise function of blinking and the reason for their modulation has not been fully understood. In the present work, I investigated the function of spontaneous blinks through various perceptual and cognitive tasks. Previous research has revealed that blinks rates decrease during some tasks but increase during others. When trying to understand these seemingly contradictory results, I observed that blink reduction occurs when one engages with an external input. For instance, a decrease has been observed due to the onset of a stimulus, sensory input processing and attention towards sensory input. However, for activities that do not involve such an engagement, e.g. imagination, daydreaming or creativity, the blink rate has been shown to increase. To follow up on the proposed hypothesis, I distinguished tasks that involve the processing of an external stimulus and tasks that involve disengagement. In the first part of the project, I explored blinking during stimulus engagement. If the probability of blinking is low when engaging with the stimulus, then one should find a reduction in blinks specifically during the time period of processing but not during sensory input per se. To this end, in study 1, I tested the influence of task-relevant information duration on blink timing and additionally manipulated the overall sensory input using a visual and an auditory temporal simultaneity judgement task. The results showed that blinks were suppressed longer for longer periods of relevant information or in other words, blinks occurred at the end of relevant information processing for both the visual and the auditory modality. Since relevance is mediated through top-down processes, I argue that the reduction in blinks is a top-down driven suppression. In studies 2 and 3, I again investigated stimulus processing, but in this case, processing was triggered internally and not based on specific changes in the external input. To this end, I used bistable stimuli, in which the actual physical stimulus remains constant but their perception switches between different interpretations. Studies on the involvement of attention in such bistable perceptual changes indicate that the sensory input is reprocessed before the perceptual switch. The results revealed a reduction in eye blink rates before the report of perceptual switches. Importantly, I was able to decipher that the decrease was not caused by the perceptual switch or the behavioral response but likely started before the internal switch. Additionally, periods between a blink and a switch were longer than interblink intervals, indicating that blinks were followed by a period of stable percept. To conclude, the first part of the project revealed that there is a top-down driven blink suppression during the processing of an external stimulus. In the second part of the project, I extended the idea of blinks marking the disengagement from external processing and tested if blinking is associated with better performance during internally directed processes. Specifically, I investigated divergent thinking, an aspect of creativity, and the link between performance and blink rates as well as the effect of motor restriction. While I could show that motor restriction was the main factor influencing divergent thinking, the relationship between eye blink rates and creative output also depended on restriction. Results showed that higher blink rates were associated with better performance during free movement, but only between subjects. In other words, subjects who had overall higher blink rates scored better in the task, but when they were allowed to sit or walk freely. Within a single subject, trial with higher blink rates were not associated with better performance. Therefore, possibly, people who are able to disengage easily, as indicated by an overall high blink rate, perform better in divergent thinking tasks. However, the link between blink rate and internal tasks is not clear at this point. Indeed, a more complex measurement of blink behavior might be necessary to understand the relationship. In the final part of the project, I aimed to further understand the function of blinks through their neural correlates. I extracted the blink-related neural activity in the primary visual cortex (V1) of existing recordings of three rhesus monkeys during different sensory processing states. I analyzed spike related multi-unit responses, frequency dependent power changes, local field potentials and laminar distribution of activity while the animal watched a movie compared to when it was shown a blank screen. The results showed a difference in blink-related neural activity dependent on the processing state. This difference suggests a state dependent function of blinks. Taken altogether, the work presented in this thesis suggests that eye blinks have an important function during cognitive and perceptual processes. Blinks seem to facilitate a disengagement from the external world and are therefore suppressed during intended processing of external stimuli.},
  subject      = {Lidschlag},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Breil2023,
  author    = {Breil, Christina},
  title     = {Look at me and I will feel you: eye contact and social understandig},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-27802},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-278021},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2023},
  abstract  = {One of the features that defines humans as extraordinarily social beings is their striking susceptibility to the gaze of others. The research reported in this dissertation was undertaken to advance our understanding of the role of gaze cues in low-level attentional and higher-order cognitive processes. In particular, effects of gaze were examined with regard to three aspects of human cognition: (1) social attention, (2) social interaction and (3) social understanding. Chapter 1 consists of three manuscripts that investigate the boundary conditions of attention capture by direct gaze and how gaze direction is integrated with facial context information. Manuscript 1 and 2 suggest two necessary requirements for attention capture by direct gaze: a meaningful holistic facial context and sharp foveal vision, respectively. Manuscript 3 shows approach/avoidance-congruency effects between gaze direction and emotion expression on attention. Chapter 2 of this dissertation explores the role of gaze in more naturalistic social scenarios. Manuscript 4 demonstrates that gaze behavior during a conversation shapes our perception of another person. Manuscript 5 builds on these findings by showing that these perceptions define our willingness to act in a prosocial way towards our interaction partner. Finally, chapter 3 adopts a broader perspective on social cognition research with a special focus on methodological aspects. Manuscript 6 is a review highlighting the significance of methodological aspects in social cognition research and stressing the importance of sophisticated decisions on task and stimulus materials. Manuscript 7 introduces a new instrument for the assessment of social understanding in adolescents. Initial application in a young sample group indicates that an understanding of another person's mental states is a capacity that is still developing throughout adolescence. Both manuscripts of this final chapter include eye tracking data that suggest a relationship between gaze behavior and social understanding, a finding that further emphasizes the complex and multifaceted nature of social cognition. I conclude from the findings of this dissertation that research can benefit from adopting a broad view in terms of methodological as well as temporal aspects in order to capture human social cognition in its entirety.},
  subject      = {Blick},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Brych2022,
  author    = {Brych, Mareike Kimberly},
  title     = {How movements and cognition interact: An investigation of spontaneous blinks},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-26737},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-267376},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {During natural behavior, cognitive processes constantly coincide with body movements such as head or eye movements or blinks. However, during experimental investigations of cognitive processes, movements are often highly restricted which is rather unnatural. In order to improve our understanding of natural behavior, this thesis investigates the interaction between cognition and movements by focusing on spontaneous blinks, which naturally interact with other body movements. Spontaneous blinks are inevitably connected to vision as they shut out incoming visual information. Both sensory-based and cognitive factors, for example, stimulus occurrence and evaluation, were reported to influence blink behavior. Our first study investigated if such influences are comparable for visual and non-visual input. The chosen experimental design allowed dissociating sensory-driven and cognitive influences, which then could be compared between the visual and auditory domain. Our results show that blinks are more strongly modulated during passive observation of visual input compared to auditory input. This modulation is however enhanced for both input modalities by an increased attentional demand. In addition, the cognitively defined meaning of a stimulus changes blink latency independent of the sensory domain. Overall, our findings show that spontaneous blinks and cognitive processes are linked beyond vision. Moreover, the underlying cognitive processes that influence blinks are largely the same across different sensory input indicating that blinks are profoundly integrated into our system. When investigating natural behavior, it is important to consider that movements rarely occur in isolation, but are executed side by side. As these movements interact and have a link to cognitive processes, the complexity of our system increases. In order to take this complexity into account, the second part of the experimental research focused on movement interactions, more specifically on the interactions between blinks, pupil size and speaking. Our results reveal that speech-related motor activity increases blink rate and pupil size as well as modulates blink timing. This is in line with previous research that described a relation between different body and eye movements. Importantly, each bodily-induced change in eye movements affects visual information intake. Therefore, different movements can be tightly linked to perceptual processes through complex interactions. Altogether, the work of this thesis provides rich evidence that movements and cognitive processes are deeply intertwined. Therefore, movements should be seen as an integral part of our system. Taking the relevance of movements and their interactions into account during experimental investigations is necessary in order to reveal a more realistic and complete picture of human natural behavior.},
  subject      = {Kognition},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Grossekathoefer2022,
  author    = {Großekath{\"o}fer, Jonas David},
  title     = {Virtually Valid? On the Importance of Ecological Validity and Virtual Reality for Social Attention Research},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-26041},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-260417},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {Gazes are of central relevance for people. They are crucial for navigating the world and communicating with others. Nevertheless, research in recent years shows that many findings from experimental research on gaze behavior cannot be transferred from the laboratory to everyday behavior. For example, the frequency with which conspecifics are looked at is considerably higher in experimental contexts than what can be observed in daily behavior. In short: findings from laboratories cannot be generalized into general statements. This thesis is dedicated to this matter. The dissertation describes and documents the current state of research on social attention through a literature review, including a meta-analysis on the /gaze cueing/ paradigm and an empirical study on the robustness of gaze following behavior. In addition, virtual reality was used in one of the first studies in this research field. Virtual reality has the potential to significantly improve the transferability of experimental laboratory studies to everyday behavior. This is because the technology enables a high degree of experimental control in naturalistic research designs. As such, it has the potential to transform empirical research in the same way that the introduction of computers to psychological research did some 50 years ago. The general literature review on social attention is extended to the classic /gaze cueing/ paradigm through a systematic review of publications and a meta-analytic evaluation (Study 1). The cumulative evidence supported the findings of primary studies: Covert spatial attention is directed by faces. However, the experimental factors included do not explain the surprisingly large variance in the published results. Thus, there seem to be further, not well-understood variables influencing these social processes. Moreover, classic /gaze cueing/ studies have limited ecological validity. This is discussed as a central reason for the lack of generalisability. Ecological validity describes the correspondence between experimental factors and realistic situations. A stimulus or an experimental design can have high and low ecological validity on different dimensions and have different influences on behavior. Empirical research on gaze following behavior showed that the /gaze cueing/ effect also occurs with contextually embedded stimuli (Study 2). The contextual integration of the directional cue contrasted classical /gaze cueing/ studies, which usually show heads in isolation. The research results can thus be transferred /within/ laboratory studies to higher ecologically valid research paradigms. However, research shows that the lack of ecological validity in experimental designs significantly limits the transferability of experimental findings to complex situations /outside/ the laboratory. This seems to be particularly the case when social interactions and norms are investigated. However, ecological validity is also often limited in these studies for other factors, such as contextual embedding /of participants/, free exploration behavior (and, thus, attentional control), or multimodality. In a first study, such high ecological validity was achieved for these factors with virtual reality, which could not be achieved in the laboratory so far (Study 3). Notably, the observed fixation patterns showed differences even under /most similar/ conditions in the laboratory and natural environments. Interestingly, these were similar to findings also derived from comparisons of eye movement in the laboratory and field investigations. These findings, which previously came from hardly comparable groups, were thus confirmed by the present Study 3 (which did not have this limitation). Overall, /virtual reality/ is a new technical approach to contemporary social attention research that pushes the boundaries of previous experimental research. The traditional trade-off between ecological validity and experimental control thus becomes obsolete, and laboratory studies can closely inherit an excellent approximation of reality. Finally, the present work describes and discusses the possibilities of this technology and its practical implementation. Within this context, the extent to which this development can still guarantee a constructive classification of different laboratory tests in the future is examined.},
  subject      = {Aufmerksamkeit},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Stegmann2021,
  author    = {Stegmann, Yannik},
  title     = {Electrocortical mechanisms of sustained attention during the acquisition and interaction of conditioned fear and anxiety},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-23770},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-237700},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {Adapting defensive behavior to the characteristics of a threatening situation is a fundamental function of the brain. Particularly, threat imminence plays a major role for the organization of defensive responses. Acute threat prompts phasic physiological responses, which are usually associated with an intense feeling of fear. In contrast, diffuse and potentially threatening situations elicit a sustained state of anxious apprehension. Detection of the threatening stimulus defines the key event in this framework, initiating the transition from potential to acute threat. Consequently, attention to threat is crucial for supporting defensive behavior. The functions of attention are finely tuned to the characteristics of a threatening situation. Potential threat is associated with hypervigilance, in order to facilitate threat detection. Once a threatening stimulus has been identified, attention is selectively focused on the source of danger. Even though the concepts of selective attention and hypervigilance to threat are well established, evidence for their neural correlates remain scarce. Therefore, a major goal of this thesis is to elucidate the neural correlates of selective attention to acute threat and hypervigilance during potential threat. A second aim of this thesis is to provide a mechanistic account for the interaction of fear and anxiety. While contemporary models view fear and anxiety as mutually exclusive, recent findings for the neural networks of fear and anxiety suggest potential interactions. In four studies, aversive cue conditioning was used to induce acute threat, while context conditioning served as a laboratory model of potential threat. To quantify neural correlates of selective attention and hypervigilance, steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs) were measured as an index of visuocortical responding. Study 1 compared visuocortical responses to acute and potential threat for high versus low trait-anxious individuals. All individuals demonstrated enhanced electrocortical responses to the central cue in the acute threat condition, suggesting evidence for the neural correlate of selective attention. However, only low anxious individuals revealed facilitated processing of the contexts in the potential threat condition, reflecting a neural correlate of hypervigilance. High anxious individuals did not discriminate among contexts. These findings contribute to the notion of aberrational processing of potential threat for high anxious individuals. Study 2 and 3 realized orthogonal combinations of cue and context conditioning to investigate potential interactions of fear and anxiety. In contrast to Study 1 and 2, Study 3 used verbal instructions to induce potentially threatening contexts. Besides ssVEPs, threat ratings and skin conductance responses (SCRs) were recorded as efferent indices of defensive responding. None of these studies found further evidence for the neural correlates of hypervigilance and selective attention. However, results for ratings and SCRs revealed additive effects of fear and anxiety, suggesting that fear and anxiety are not mutually exclusive, but interact linearly to organize and facilitate defensive behavior. Study 4 tested ssVEPs to more ecologically valid forms of context conditioning, using flickering video stimuli of virtual offices to establish context representations. Contrary to expectations, results revealed decreased visuocortical responses during sustained presentations of anxiety compared to neutral contexts. A disruption of ssVEP signals eventually suggests interferences by continuously changing video streams which are enhanced as a function of motivational relevance. In summary, this thesis provided evidence for the neural correlates of attention only for isolated forms of fear and anxiety, but not for their interaction. In contrast, an additive interaction model of fear and anxiety for measures of defensive responding offers a new perspective on the topography of defensive behavior.},
  subject      = {Furcht},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Roesler2020,
  author    = {R{\"o}sler, Lara},
  title     = {Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms of Social Attention},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-21609},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-216092},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2020},
  abstract  = {Humans in our environment are of special importance to us. Even if our minds are fixated on tasks unrelated to their presence, our attention will likely be drawn towards other people's appearances and their actions. While we might remain unaware of this attentional bias at times, various studies have demonstrated the preferred visual scanning of other humans by recording eye movements in laboratory settings. The present thesis aims to investigate the circumstances under and the mechanisms by which this so-called social attention operates. The first study demonstrates that social features in complex naturalistic scenes are prioritized in an automatic fashion. After 200 milliseconds of stimulus presentation, which is too brief for top-down processing to intervene, participants targeted image areas depicting humans significantly more often than would be expected from a chance distribution of saccades. Additionally, saccades towards these areas occurred earlier in time than saccades towards non-social image regions. In the second study, we show that human features receive most fixations even when bottom-up information is restricted; that is, even when only the fixated region was visible and the remaining parts of the image masked, participants still fixated on social image regions longer than on regions without social cues. The third study compares the influence of real and artificial faces on gaze patterns during the observation of dynamic naturalistic videos. Here we find that artificial faces, belonging to humanlike statues or machines, significantly predicted gaze allocation but to a lesser extent than real faces. In the fourth study, we employed functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neural correlates of reflexive social attention. Analyses of the evoked blood-oxygenation level dependent responses pointed to an involvement of striate and extrastriate visual cortices in the encoding of social feature space. Collectively, these studies help to elucidate under which circumstances social features are prioritized in a laboratory setting and how this prioritization might be achieved on a neuronal level. The final experimental chapter addresses the question whether these laboratory findings can be generalized to the real world. In this study, participants were introduced to a waiting room scenario in which they interacted with a confederate. Eye movement analyses revealed that gaze behavior heavily depended on the social context and were influenced by whether an interaction is currently desired. We further did not find any evidence for altered gaze behavior in socially anxious participants. Alleged gaze avoidance or hypervigilance in social anxiety might thus represent a laboratory phenomenon that occurs only under very specific real-life conditions. Altogether the experiments described in the present thesis thus refine our understanding of social attention and simultaneously challenge the inferences we can draw from laboratory research.},
  subject      = {Aufmerksamkeit},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Ahrens2020,
  author    = {Ahrens, Lea Marlen},
  title     = {The Role of Attentional Control and Fear Acquisition and Generalization in Social Anxiety Disorder},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-17162},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-171622},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2020},
  abstract  = {Although Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is one of the most prevalent mental disorders, still little is known about its development and maintenance. Cognitive models assume that deviations in attentional as well as associative learning processes play a role in the etiology of SAD. Amongst others, deficits in inhibitory attentional control as well as aberrations during fear generalization, which have already been observed in other anxiety disorders, are two candidate mechanisms that might contribute to the onset and retention of SAD. However, a review of the literature shows that there is a lack of research relating to these topics. Thus, the aim of the present thesis was to examine in which way individuals with SAD differ from healthy controls regarding attentional control and generalization of acquired fear during the processing of social stimuli. Study 1 tested whether impairment in the inhibitory control of attention is a feature of SAD, and how it might be influenced by emotional expression and gaze direction of an interactional partner. For this purpose, individuals with SAD and healthy controls (HC) participated in an antisaccade task with faces displaying different emotional expressions (angry, neutral and happy) and gaze directions (direct and averted) serving as target stimuli. While the participants performed either pro- or antisaccades in response to the peripherally presented faces, their gaze behavior was recorded via eye-tracking, and ratings of valence and arousal were obtained. Results revealed that both groups showed prolonged latencies and increased error rates in trials with correct anti- compared to prosaccades. However, there were no differences between groups with regard to response latency or error rates, indicating that SAD patients did not exhibit impairment on inhibitory attentional control in comparison to HC during eye-tracking. Possible explanations for this finding could be that reduced inhibitory attentional control in SAD only occurs under certain circumstances, for example, when these individuals currently run the risk of being negatively evaluated by others and not in the mere presence of phobic stimuli, or when the cognitive load of a task is so high that it cannot be unwound by compensatory strategies, such as putting more effort into a task. As not only deviations in attentional, but also associative learning processes might be pathogenic markers of SAD, these mechanisms were further addressed in the following experiments. Study 2 is the first that attempted to investigate the generalization of conditioned fear in patients with SAD. To this end, patients with SAD and HC were conditioned to two neutral female faces serving as conditioned stimuli (CS+: reinforced; CS-: non-reinforced) and a fearful face paired with a loud scream serving as unconditioned stimulus (US). Fear generalization was tested by presenting morphs of the two faces (GS: generalization stimuli), which varied in their similarity to the original faces. During the whole experiment, self-report ratings, heart rate (HR) and skin conductance responses (SCR) were recorded. Results demonstrated that SAD patients rated all stimuli as less pleasant and more arousing, and overestimated the occurrence of the US compared to HC, indicating a general hyperarousal in individuals with SAD. In addition, ratings and SCR indicated that both groups generalized their acquired fear from the CS+ to intermediate GSs as a function of their similarity to the CS+. However, except for the HR data, which indicated that only SAD patients but not HC displayed a generalization response in this measure, most of the results did not support the hypothesis that SAD is characterized by overgeneralization. A plausible reason for this finding could be that overgeneralization is just a key characteristic of some anxiety disorders and SAD is not one of them. Still, other factors, such as comorbidities in the individuals with SAD, could also have had an influence on the results, which is why overgeneralization was further examined in study 3. The aim of study 3 was to investigate fear generalization on a neuronal level. Hence, high (HSA) and low socially anxious participants (LSA) underwent a conditioning paradigm, which was an adaption of the experimental design used study 2 for EEG. During the experiment, steady-state visually evoked potentials (ssVEPs) and ratings of valence and arousal were recorded. Analyses revealed significant generalization gradients in all ratings with highest fear responses to the CS+ and a progressive decline of these reactions with increasing similarity to the CS-. In contrast, the generalization gradient on a neuronal level showed highest amplitudes for the CS+ and a reduction in amplitude to the most proximal, but not distal GSs in the ssVEP signal, which might be interpreted as lateral inhibition in the visual cortex. The observed dissociation among explicit and implicit measures points to different functions of behavioral and sensory cortical processes during fear generalization: While the ratings might reflect an individual's consciously increased readiness to react to threat, the lateral inhibition pattern in the occipital cortex might serve to maximize the contrast among stimuli with and without affective value and thereby improve adaptive behavior. As no group differences could be observed, the finding of study 2 that overgeneralization does not seem to be a marker of SAD is further consolidated. In sum, the conducted experiments suggest that individuals with SAD are characterized by a general hyperarousal during the exposition to disorder-relevant stimuli as indicated by enhanced arousal and reduced valence ratings of the stimuli compared to HC. However, the hypotheses that reduced inhibitory attentional control and overgeneralization of conditioned fear are markers of SAD were mostly not confirmed. Further research is required to elucidate whether they only occur under certain circumstances, such as high cognitive load (e.g. handling two tasks simultaneously) or social stress (e.g. before giving a speech), or whether they are not characteristics of SAD at all. With the help of these findings, new interventions for the treatment of SAD can be developed, such as attentional bias modification or discrimination learning.},
  subject      = {Sozialangst},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Geiger2020,
  author    = {Geiger, Maximilian Johannes},
  title     = {Das neuronale Aufmerksamkeitsnetzwerk aus dem Gleichgewicht - Ein ‚imaging genetics' Modell der Panikst{\"o}rung},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-16178},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-161787},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2020},
  abstract  = {Hintergrund: Eine Panikattacke beginnt typischerweise mit der Wahrnehmung einer physiologischen oder psychischen Ver{\"a}nderung, die von der Person als bedrohlich eingestuft wird. W{\"a}hrend in klassischen neuroanatomischen Modellen der Panikst{\"o}rung die Amygdala in der sich anschließenden aufschaukelnden Symptomatik in den Mittelpunkt gestellt wurde, erweitern aktuelle Studien dieses amygdalozentrische Bild und lenken die Aufmerksamkeit auf extratemporale neuronale Netzwerke. Dysfunktionen im neuronalen Aufmerksamkeitsnetzwerk, relevant f{\"u}r die Wahrnehmung und Regulierung exterozeptiver und interozeptiver Prozesse, k{\"o}nnten zur Entstehung einer Panikst{\"o}rung beitragen. Weiterhin scheinen bestimmte Risikogenotypen f{\"u}r die Panikst{\"o}rung wie z.B. im Adenosin Rezeptor 2A (ADORA2A) oder dem Neuropeptid S Rezeptor (NPSR1) Gen und die entsprechenden Neurotransmittersysteme in der Regulierung der Aufmerksamkeitsnetzwerke involviert zu sein. Fragestellung: Dysfunktionen im noradrenergen bottom-up Alertingnetzwerk und in der dopaminergen exekutiven top-down Aufmerksamkeitskontrolle k{\"o}nnten in einem neurokognitiven Entstehungsmodell der Panikst{\"o}rung eine wichtige Rolle spielen. Mit Hilfe funktioneller Bildgebung soll die Funktion des neuronalen Aufmerksamkeitsnetzwerkes in einer nichtklinischen Stichprobe abh{\"a}ngig von genetischen Risikofaktoren und einer klinischen Stichprobe von und nach einer kognitiven Verhaltenstherapie untersucht werden. Methoden: Im nichtklinischen Teil der Untersuchung wurden in Studie 1 47 gesunde Versuchspersonen f{\"u}r die NPSR1 rs324981 Variante stratifiziert rekrutiert. Mittels fMRT wurde die Aktivit{\"a}t des Alertingnetzwerks und des Executive Control Netzwerks auf neuronaler Ebene mit dem Attentional Networt Test (ANT) untersucht. In Studie 2 wurde bei N=65 Versuchspersonen stratifiziert f{\"u}r die ADORA2A rs5751876 Variante als zus{\"a}tzliches Verhaltensmaß die F{\"a}higkeit zur interozeptiven Wahrnehmung in Bezug zur Konnektivit{\"a}t im insul{\"a}ren Ruhenetzwerk untersucht. Im klinischen Teil der Untersuchung (Studie 3) wurden 44 Patienten mit Panikst{\"o}rung sowie eine entsprechend große und gematchte Kontrollgruppe rekrutiert. Es wurden fMRT Ruhemessungen vor und nach Abschluss einer kognitiven Verhaltenstherapie erhoben. Als zus{\"a}tzliches Verhaltensmaß wurde die selbstberichtete Aufmerksamkeitskontrolle zwischen der Patienten- und der Kontrollgruppe verglichen. Ergebnisse: Tr{\"a}ger des NPSR1 TT und des ADORA2A TT Risikogenotyps f{\"u}r Angst und Angsterkrankungen zeigten eine erh{\"o}hte Aktivit{\"a}t in Teilen des Alertingnetzwerks. Die Aktivit{\"a}t im Executive Control Netzwerk war arealabh{\"a}ngig teilweise erh{\"o}ht, teilweise reduziert. Innerhalb eines interozeptiven Netzwerks zeigten Tr{\"a}ger des ADORA2A TT Genotyps Hinweise auf eine dysfunktionale fronto-striatale-insul{\"a}re Interaktion. Im klinischen Teil der Studie zeigten Patienten mit Panikst{\"o}rung eine reduzierte Konnektivit{\"a}t des dorsolateralen Pr{\"a}frontalkortex (dlPFC) im fronto-parietalen Aufmerksamkeitsnetzwerk. Die Konnektivit{\"a}t innerhalb dieses Netzwerks korrelierte mit Defiziten in selbstberichteter Aufmerksamkeitskontrolle bei Patienten mit Panikst{\"o}rung. Nach Abschluss der Therapie zeigte sich bei Patienten, die von der Therapie profitiert hatten, wieder eine Zunahme oder Verbesserung der Konnektivit{\"a}t mit dem dlPFC. Schlussfolgerung: Die Ergebnisse dieser Untersuchung betonen die Rolle dysfunktionaler interozeptiver und exterozeptiver Aufmerksamkeitsnetzwerke in der Entstehung von Angsterkrankungen. Bei Patienten mit Panikst{\"o}rung sowie gesunden Versuchspersonen mit bestimmten pr{\"a}disponierenden genetischen Variationen scheint eine Dysbalance des neuronalen Aufmerksamkeitsnetzwerks bzgl. der Abstimmung von bottom-up und top-down Netzwerken vorzuliegen.},
  subject      = {Angstst{\"o}rung},
  language  = {de}
}
@phdthesis{Wenzel2019,
  author    = {Wenzel, Martina},
  title     = {Aufmerksamkeitsprozesse und Emotionsregulationsmechanismen in der bipolaren St{\"o}rung},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-18963},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-189638},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2019},
  abstract  = {Neben Stimmungsschwankungen leiden viele bipolare Patienten unter kognitiven Beeintr{\"a}chtigungen. Dies ist von hoher Relevanz, da neuropsychologische Defizite zur Aufrechterhaltung der bipolaren St{\"o}rung beitragen k{\"o}nnen. Unsere Studie widmete sich zum einen der Untersuchung verzerrter Aufmerksamkeitsprozesse als auch der Erfassung dysfunktionaler Emotionsregulationsstrategien in der bipolaren St{\"o}rung. Da es uns besonders interessierte, ob diese dysfunktionalen Prozesse im euthymen Intervall bestehen bleiben, rekrutierten wir akut depressive als auch euthyme bipolare Patienten. Weiterhin untersuchten wir, ob der Aspekt der pr{\"a}dominanten Polarit{\"a}t einen Einfluss auf die Informationsverarbeitung und Emotionsregulation haben k{\"o}nnte. Zur Erfassung selektiver Aufmerksamkeitsprozesse verwendeten wir eine Dot-Probe-Aufgabe. In der vorliegenden Arbeit konnte gezeigt werden, dass bei den akut depressiven bipolaren Patienten deutliche Defizite im Reaktionsverm{\"o}gen vorlagen. Bei den euthymen Patienten mit manischer Polarit{\"a}t fand sich {\"u}berraschenderweise ein Bias weg von positiven Stimuli, was m{\"o}glicherweise als Schutzmechanismus vor potentiellen Triggern einer Manie interpretiert werden kann. Um zu testen, ob sich bipolare Patienten in den Emotionsregulationsstrategien von gesunden Kontrollpersonen unterscheiden, wurden zwei verschiedene Frageb{\"o}gen eingesetzt. In der Auswertung zeigte sich, dass nicht nur akut depressive Patienten, sondern auch remittierte Patienten zu dysfunktionalen Emotionsregulationsstrategien neigten und dass die euthymen Probanden mit depressiver bzw. manischer Polarit{\"a}t in unterschiedlichen Emotionsregulationsstrategien von gesunden Probanden abwichen. Zusammenfassend l{\"a}sst sich festhalten, dass Defizite in der selektiven Aufmerksamkeit und in der Emotionsregulation nicht nur in der akuten Krankheitsphase, sondern auch im „gesunden Intervall" vorhanden sind. Dar{\"u}ber hinaus liefert die Studie erste Hinweise darauf, dass sich Patienten mit depressiver und manischer Polarit{\"a}t in der Informationsverarbeitung emotionaler Stimuli als auch in Emotionsregulationsstrategien unterscheiden.},
  subject      = {Manisch-depressive Krankheit},
  language  = {de}
}
@phdthesis{Rubo2019,
  author    = {Rubo, Marius},
  title     = {Social Attention in the Laboratory, in Real Life and in Virtual Reality},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-18845},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-188452},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2019},
  abstract  = {Social attention is a ubiquitous, but also enigmatic and sometimes elusive phenomenon. We direct our gaze at other human beings to see what they are doing and to guess their intentions, but we may also absorb social events en passant as they unfold in the corner of the eye. We use our gaze as a discrete communication channel, sometimes conveying pieces of information which would be difficult to explicate, but we may also find ourselves avoiding eye-contact with others in moments when self-disclosure is fear-laden. We experience our gaze as the most genuine expression of our will, but research also suggests considerable levels of predictability and automaticity in our gaze behavior. The phenomenon's complexity has hindered researchers from developing a unified framework which can conclusively accommodate all of its aspects, or from even agreeing on the most promising research methodologies. The present work follows a multi-methods approach, taking on several aspects of the phenomenon from various directions. Participants in study 1 viewed dynamic social scenes on a computer screen. Here, low-level physical saliency (i.e. color, contrast, or motion) and human heads both attracted gaze to a similar extent, providing a comparison of two vastly different classes of gaze predictors in direct juxtaposition. In study 2, participants with varying degrees of social anxiety walked in a public train station while their eye movements were tracked. With increasing levels of social anxiety, participants showed a relative avoidance of gaze at near compared to distant people. When replicating the experiment in a laboratory situation with a matched participant group, social anxiety did not modulate gaze behavior, fueling the debate around appropriate experimental designs in the field. Study 3 employed virtual reality (VR) to investigate social gaze in a complex and immersive, but still highly controlled situation. In this situation, participants exhibited a gaze behavior which may be more typical for real-life compared to laboratory situations as they avoided gaze contact with a virtual conspecific unless she gazed at them. This study provided important insights into gaze behavior in virtual social situations, helping to better estimate the possible benefits of this new research approach. Throughout all three experiments, participants showed consistent inter-individual differences in their gaze behavior. However, the present work could not resolve if these differences are linked to psychologically meaningful traits or if they instead have an epiphenomenal character.},
  subject      = {Aufmerksamkeit},
  language  = {en}
}