Education and Professional Experience

Ph.D.

2010–2013Doctoral thesis on
“Cross Frequency Coupling in Motor Automation and Execution in the Human Motor System”
(supervisor Prof. Dr. Hermann Hinrichs)

Academic Studies

Research Focus and Major Findings

• Physical activity leads to a brain state optimal for visual perception and working memory:
  Our research demonstrates that physical activity modulates broadband high-frequency activity (BHA), measurable with MEG, which reflects early brain state changes, particularly in the visual cortex. Physical activity improves visual performance by enhancing attention and clarity, while also boosting working memory. This study highlights how physical activity optimizes neural interactions, enhancing both perceptual and cognitive functions in humans.

• How brain state changes alter information integration: Mind wandering is assumed to impair our daily activities due to fluctuations in attention to episodic content. In contrast to current theories, I showed that spatial attention is upregulated to compensate for mental distractions. This is an important step toward gaining insights into pathological forms of mind wandering, such as rumination in patients suffering from depression. Cognitive training such as mindfulness meditation is thought to counteract the dynamics of mind-wandering. I found that this might be achieved by tuning brain dynamics to a critical point of optimal information processing during meditation. Extensive experience with the application of decoding algorithms allowed us to decipher single-trial indicators of attentional shifts and translate them into reliable brain-computer interface control signals.

• How self-awareness reduces impulsivity: Impulsive decisions arise from preferring smaller but sooner rewards compared to larger but later rewards. A major finding in my research is that choice options are represented at the single-unit level in the brain. Furthermore, I revealed how neural representations of and attention to choice alternatives contribute to reward decisions during temporal discounting. This knowledge helps to understand critical mechanisms of impulsivity that are altered in patients with eating disorders.

• Neural representations of predictions: Humans are very good at remembering and implicitly inferring a likelihood distribution of environmental events. Challenging current theories of Predictive Coding, I found in direct intracranial recordings of humans distinct but interacting cortical networks for stimulus response and response suppression. Most importantly, I showed how high-frequency activity in the frontal cortex heralds ensuing stimuli.

 Publications

Publications on Brain State Changes following Physical Activity

Che, X., Auer, B., Schmid, P., Reichert, C., Scholz, A., Weischner, T., Knight, R. T., & Dürschmid, S. (2024). Physical Exercise Improves Working Memory through Ripple-Spindle Coupling. BioRxiv.

Weischner, T., Che, X., Schmid, P., Reichert, C., Scholz, A., Knight, R. T., & Dürschmid, S. (2024). Physical activity modulates early visual response and improves target detection in humans. Biorxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.10.602924

Publications on Predictive Coding

Dürschmid S, Reichert C, Hinrichs H, Heinze HJ, Kirsch HE, Knight RT, Deouell LY.  Direct evidence for prediction signals in frontal cortex independent of prediction error. Cereb Cortex. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhy331

Dürschmid S, Edwards E, Reichert C, Dewar C, Hinrichs H, Heinze HJ, Kirsch HE, Dalal SS, Deouell LY, Knight RT. Hierarchy of prediction errors for auditory events in human temporal and frontal cortex. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016  https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1525030113

Dürschmid S, Zaehle T, Hinrichs H, Heinze HJ, Voges J, Garrido MI, Dolan RJ, Knight RT. Sensory Deviancy Detection Measured Directly Within the Human Nucleus Accumbens. Cereb Cortex. 2016 https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhu304

Publications on Brain State Changes during Self-Referential Cognition

Wienke C, Bartsch M V., Vogelgesang L, Reichert C, Hinrichs H, Heinze H-J, Dürschmid S. Local sleep during mind-wandering enhances processes of spatial attention allocation. Cerebral Cortex Communications, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/texcom/tgab001

Dürschmid S, Maric A, Kehl MS, Robert T Knight RT, Hinrichs H, Heinze HJ. Fronto-temporal cortex regulation of subjective valence to suppress impulsivity in intertemporal choices. Journal of Neuroscience, 2021. https://www.jneurosci.org/content/41/8/1727

Publications on Brain State Changes during Learning

Eckert D, Reichert C, Bien CG, Heinze HJ, Knight RT, Deouell LY, Dürschmid S. Distinct interacting cortical networks for stimulus-response and repetition-suppression. Commun Biol. 2022 https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-022-03861-4.

Publications on Brain-Machine Interfaces

Reichert C, Tellez Ceja IF, Sweeney-Reed CM, Heinze HJ, Hinrichs H, Dürschmid S.  Impact of stimulus features on the performance of a gaze-independent brain-computer interface based on covert spatial attention shifts. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2020. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2020.591777

Reichert C, Dürschmid S, Bartsch M, Hopf JM, Heinze H-J, Hinrichs H. Decoding the covert shift of spatial attention from electroencephalographic signals permits reliable control of a brain-computer interface. Journal of Neural Engineering, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-2552/abb692