Vanessa studied Psychology at the University of Frankfurt where she used EEG connectomes to investigate the neural representation of trust and worked as a research assistant at the University of Tübingen, investigating the predictive value of resting-state MRI connectomes for the classification of depressive patients and healthy controls.
She then went on to work on her PhD in the lab of Nils Kroemer (neuroMADLAB) at the University of Tübingen where she used non-invasive stimulation of the vagus nerve (the main pathway connecting the brain to the viscera) to investigate how the brain deals with disturbances in energy homeostasis, a concept frequently associated with depression as individuals report changes in their appetite and sleep as key symptoms.
In 2021 she joined the GillanLab at Trinity College Dublin with the aim to build more appropriate models of individual behavior in key dimensions of cognition which can (a) help to elucidate neurobiological mechanisms driving psychiatric disorders and (b) help to develop predictive measures to identify individuals at risk and tailor treatment.
She believes that psychiatric disorders are complex and highly individual, necessitating the study of individual vulnerabilities in large, heterogeneous samples including individuals transitioning in and out of states of disease and health. To support this approach, she follows the principle of “garbage in – garbage out” and likes to dissect tasks and psychometric measures by investigating their reliability and suitability for prediction on the individual level. As she believes that data and scientific results need to be a common good, she strongly advocates against science as a black box and, thus, implements her projects with a focus on reproducibility and open sharing.
Sparked by her interest in programming and hardware she also loves to build fancy stuff in her spare time of which some things, like a MATLAB controlled candy dispenser, even make it to the lab setting while others, like a 3D printed model of her brain and heart, happily reside at home.
Peer-reviewed publications
- Teckentrup V, Krylova M, Jamalabadi H, Neubert S, Neuser MP, Hartig R, Fallgatter A, Walter M, & Kroemer NB (2021). Brain signaling dynamics after vagus nerve stimulation. NeuroImage. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118679; materials on OSF: https://osf.io/5z36u/; preprint on bioRxiv
- Müller FK, Teckentrup V, Kühnel A, Ferstl M & Kroemer NB (2021). Acute vagus nerve stimulation does not affect liking or wanting ratings of food in healthy participants. Appetite. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2021.105813; preprint on bioRxiv
- Wolf V, Kühnel A, Teckentrup V, Koenig J & Kroemer NB (2021). Does transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation affect vagally mediated heart rate variability? A living and interactive Bayesian meta-analysis. Psychophysiology, 58,e13933. doi: 10.1111/psyp.13933; preprint on bioRxiv
- Teckentrup V, Neubert S, Santiago JCP, Hallschmid M, Walter M, & Kroemer NB (2020). Non-invasive stimulation of vagal afferents reduces gastric frequency. Brain Stim, 13: 470-473. doi: 10.1016/j.brs.2019.12.018; preprint on bioRxiv
- Krylova M, Alizadeh S, Izyurov I, Teckentrup V, Chang C, van der Meer JN, Erb M, Kroemer NB, Koenig T, Walter M, Jamalabadi H (2020) Evidence for modulation of EEG microstate sequence by vigilance level. NeuroImage, doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117393; preprint on bioRxiv
- Martens L*, Kroemer NB*, Teckentrup V, Colic L, Palomero-Gallagher P, Li M, & Walter M (2020). Localized prediction of glutamate from whole-brain functional connectivity of the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex. J Neurosci; preprint on bioRxiv
- Neuser MP, Teckentrup V, Kühnel A, Hallschmid M, Walter M, & Kroemer NB (2020). Vagus nerve stimulation increases the drive to work for rewards. Nat Commun, 11: 3555. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-17344-9; preprint on bioRxiv
- Kühnel A, Teckentrup V, Neuser MP, Huys QJM, Burrasch C, Walter M, & Kroemer NB (2020). Stimulation of the vagus nerve reduces learning in a go/no-go reinforcement learning task. Eur Neuropsychopharmacol; preprint on bioRxiv
- Farmer A, Strzelczyk A, Finisguerra A, Gourine AV, Gharabaghi A, Hasan A, …, Kroemer NB, …, Teckentrup V, …, & König J (2020). International consensus based review and recommendations for minimum reporting standards in research on transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (Version 2020). Front Hum Neurosci. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.568051
- van den Hoek Ostende MM, Neuser MP, Teckentrup V, Svaldi J, & Kroemer NB (2020). Can’t decide how much to EAT? Variability in effort for reward is associated with cognitive control. Appetite. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2020.105067;preprint on bioRxiv
- Ferstl M, Teckentrup V, Lin WM, Kräutlein F, Kühnel A, Klaus J, Walter M, & Kroemer NB (2020) Non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation boosts mood recovery after effort exertion. Psych Medicine. doi: 10.1017/S0033291720005073;preprint on bioRxiv
- Teckentrup V, van der Meer JN, Borchardt V, Fan Y, Neuser MP, Tempelmann C, Herrmann L, Walter M*, & Kroemer NB* (2019). The anterior insula channels prefrontal expectancy signals during affective processing. NeuroImage, 200: 414-424. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.06.041; preprint on bioRxiv
- Fröhner JH, Teckentrup V, Smolka MN, & Kroemer NB (2019). Addressing the reliability fallacy in fMRI: Similar group effects may arise from unreliable individual effects, NeuroImage, 195: 174-189. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.03.053; preprint on bioRxiv
- Götting FN, Borchardt V, Demenescu LR, Teckentrup V, Dinica, K, Lord AR, Rohe T, Hausdorfer DI, Li M, Metzger CD, Walter M (2017) Higher interference susceptibility in reaction time task is accompanied by weakened functional dissociation between salience and default mode network. Neurosci Lett, 649:34-40. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2017.03.035
- Hahn T, Notebaert K, Anderl C, Teckentrup V, Kaßecker A, Windmann S (2014) How to trust a perfect stranger: predicting initial trust behavior from resting-state brain-electrical connectivity. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci, 10:809-813. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsu122
Preprints
- Müller S, Teckentrup V, Rebollo I, Hallschmid M & Kroemer NB (2021). Vagus nerve stimulation increases stomach-brain coupling via a vagal afferent pathway. bioRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2021.10.07.463517
- Neuser MP, Kräutlein F, Kühnel A, Teckentrup V, Svaldi J, Kroemer NB (2021). Influenca: a gamified assessment of value-based decision-making for longitudinal studies. bioRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2021.04.27.441601
You can find out more about Vanessa’s research on Google Scholar and via ORCID.
gillanlab.com 