EEG Archives -

Recent findings on how interruptions affect working memory

Phone calls, messages, or emails: At work, we are interrupted and distracted several times a day. This is especially challenging when working from home due to Covid-19. In a recent study, we focused on how such interferences affect the performance of working memory. We could show that it is particularly difficult to get back to the primary task after an interruption. This was not the case with non-relevant distractions.

PhD project: Attentional selection within working memory

My PhD project investigates how the brain handles visual information that lost its relevance after it was encoded into working memory.

PhD project: Mobile neuroergonomics

Most of us probably know the situation that we tried to navigate through a crowded space, let’s say a shopping street on a Saturday afternoon, and ended up forgetting some of our shopping list items, because we had to evade several obstacles in our way. This phenomenon is called cognitive-motor interference. It is due to the capacity limit of human cognitive resources that can be allocated to all the different processes our brain is calculating at any point in time.

New research laboratory: Work research at IfADo strikes out in a new direction

The IfADo research is on the move: with a Gait Real-Time Analysis Interactive Lab (GRAIL). In it, the gait movement of the entire body can be analyzed in three dimensions in a virtual environment. The laboratory enables researchers to analyze phenomena of human information processing while moving. “The GRAIL allows us new and realistic research approaches“, says Prof. Dr. Gerhard Rinkenauer.

How mind wandering is reflected in the brain

It doesn’t matter whether you are already thinking about the end of the day at work or are compiling a shopping list in your head while driving: Everybody wanders with the thoughts. But this can not only reduce your own performance. It can also be dangerous in high-risk work. IfADo psychologist Dr. Stefan Arnau investigated the phenomenon in a recent study in collaboration with researchers of the Heidelberg University. The measurement of alpha power in the brain is therefore a good indicator of thought aberrations.

New PhD project: EEG correlates of cognitive resource allocation

Have you ever

been blind to the environment around you as you were so much focused on a difficult or engaging task?
written a text in 2 hours for which you normally need 5 days?
not been able to receive the full attention of your best friend anymore the moment she/he became a parent?

Encoding probability in the brain?

The so-called P300 (or P3b) is the most prominent component in the event-related potential of the EEG. Since decades it is the main psychophysiological measure of processing of task relevant information. Numerous studies in this time have proposed that the amplitude of the P300 is, among others, modulated by the probability of a stimulus. In this recent publication we demonstrate this assumption has to be questioned.