Vision & Motor System Group

We are an interdisciplinary group performing experimental and clinical research in the field of cognitive neuroscience and motor system physiology at the Department of Neurology of the Charité in Berlin. We have access to both clinical and research facilities with neuroimaging methods, transcranial stimulation and EEG. Methods include behavioral experiments, functional neuroimaging in both healthy human subjects and patients.

With a background in neurology, experimental psychology and mathematics we focus our research interests on the following topics:

– attention mechanisms in the human visual system using psychophysical, neuroimaging (fMRI) and causal modelling methods

– developing a computational model of visual attention and couple it closely with our experimental results

– cortical areas and mechanisms which control attention during search

– physiological and anatomical basis as well as functional relevance of interhemisheric connections between both primary motor cortices

– physiological basis of the neurovascular signal in functional imaging

– functional connectivity of the motor system

– application and further development of a dynamical systems approach to movement coordination

– detection, resolution and behavioral consequences of conflicts at different levels of information processing investigated in psychophysical, EEG, fMRI and lesion studies

The group is part of the Berlin NeuroImaging Center , Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience and the Berlin School of Mind & Brain. We are also being supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (BR 1691 3-2; BR 1691 4-1, BR 1691 5-1; STU 248/3-1).

Please see the above links for more details on the research projects.

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Selected Publications

Brocke J, Schmidt S, Irlbacher K, Brandt, SA.

Transcranial cortex stimulation and fMRI: Electrophysiological correlates of dual-pulse BOLD signal-modulation (NeuroImage accepted 2007)

Stelzel C, Kraft A, Brandt SA, Schubert T (2007).

Dissociable neural effects of task order control and working memory load during dual-task processing. (Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience in press).

Stürmer B, Redlich M, Irlbacher K. Brandt SA (2007).

Executive control over response priming and conflict: A transcranial magnetic stimulation study. Experimental Brain Research (in press)

Olma M, Donner TH, Brandt SA (2007)

Control of Visual Selection during Visual Search in the Human Brain Journal of Eye Movement Research www.jemr.org

Irlbacher K, Kuhnert J, Roricht S, Meyer BU, Brandt SA (2006).

Central and peripheral deafferent pain: Therapy with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. Nervenarzt 77(10):1196-203.

Irlbacher K, Voss M, Meyer BU, Rothwell JC (2006).

Influence of ipsilateral transcranial magnetic stimulation on the triphasic EMG-pattern accompanying fast ballistic movements. J Physiol 2006 Mar 31; [Epub ahead of print].

Kraft A, Pape N, Hagendorf H, Schmidt S, Naito A, Brandt SA (2006).

What determines sustained visual attention? The impact of distracter positions, task difficulty and visual fields compared. Brain Res. 2006 Dec 14; [Epub ahead of print].

Thut G, Nietzel A, Brandt SA, Pascual-Leone A (2006).

{alpha}-Band electroencephalographic activity over occipital cortex indexes visuospatial attention bias and predicts visual target detection. J Neurosci. 26(37):9494-9502.

Brocke J, Irlbacher K, Hauptmann B, Voss M, Brandt SA (2005).

Transcranial magnetic and electrical stimulation compared: Does TES activate intracortical neuronal circuits? Clin Neurophysiol, 116(12):2748-56.

Kraft A, Schira MM, Hagendorf H, Schmidt S, Olma M, Brandt SA (2005).

fMRI localizer-technique: Efficient acquisition and functional properties of single retinotopic positions in the human visual cortex. NeuroImage, 28(2):453-63.

Kraft A, Mueller NG, Hagendorf H, Schira MM, Dick S, Fendrich RM, Brandt SA (2005)

Interactions between task difficulty and hemispheric distribution of attended locations: implications for the splitting attention debate. Cog Brain Res, 24(1), 19-32.

Kühn AA, Brandt SA, Kupsch A, Trottenberg T, Brocke J, Irlbacher K, Schneider GH & Meyer B-U (2004).

Comparison of motor effects following subcortical electrical stimulation through electrodes in the globus pallidus internus and cortical transcranial magnetic stimulation. Exp Brain Res 155: 48-55.

Schira MM, Fahle M, Donner TH, Kraft A, Brandt SA (2004)

Differential contribution of early visual areas to the perceptual process of contour processing. J Neurophysiol, 91, 1716-1721.

Mueller NG, Donner TH, Bartelt OA, Brandt SA, Villringer A, Kleinschmidt A (2003)

The functional neuroanatomy of visual conjunction search: a parametric fMRI study. NeuroImage, 20, 1578-1590.

Mueller NG, Bartelt OA, Donner TH, Villringer A, Brandt SA (2003)

A physiological correlate of the ‘zoom lens’ of visual attention. J Neurosci 23(9), 3561-3565.

Donner TH, Kettermann A, Diesch E, Villringer A, Brandt SA (2003)

Parietal activation during visual search in the absence of multiple distractors. Neuroreport, 14(17), 2257-2261.

Brandt SA, Gothe J, Sabel B, Roericht S, Kasten E, Meyer BU (2002)

Changes of visual cortex excitability in blind subjects as demonstrated by transcranial magnetic stimulation. Brain 125, 479- 490.

Donner TH, Kettermann A, Diesch E, Villringer A, Brandt SA (2002)

Visual feature and conjunction searches of equal difficulty engage only partially overlapping frontoparietal networks. NeuroImage 15, 16-25.

Gothe J+, Brandt SA+, Sabel B, Roericht S, Kasten E & Meyer B-U (2002).

Changes of visual cortex excitability in blind subjects as demonstrated by transcranial magnetic stimulation. Brain 125: 479-490 +(equal contribution).

Irlbacher K, Meyer B-U, Voss M, Brandt SA & Roericht S (2002).

Spatial reorganization of motor output maps of stump muscles in human upper-limb amputees. Neursci Lett 321: 129-132.

Irlbacher K, Brandt SA & Meyer B-U (2002).

In vivo study indicating loss of intracortical inhibition in tumour-associated epilepsy. Ann Neurol 52: 95-99.

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