Vielen Dank für Ihr Interesse an einer Abschlussarbeit in der Kognitionspsychologie!

Wir bieten fortlaufend Themen für Bachelor- und Masterarbeiten in den Forschungsfeldern unseres Arbeitsbereichs an. 

Abschlussarbeiten werden bei uns typischerweise im Rahmen größerer Forschungsprojekte geschrieben, wobei jede/r einzelne Studierende eine eigene (Sub-)Fragestellung bearbeitet. Die Datenerhebungen finden oft im Team statt. Datenauswertung und Berichtlegung sind jedoch als unabhängige Einzelleistungen zu erbringen. Es werden nur empirische Arbeiten bei uns im Arbeitsbereich betreut. 

Im Rahmen der unten aufgelisteten Forschungsprojekte werden zahlreiche Daten erhoben, z.B. zum chronischen Stresserleben, zu Ängstlichkeit oder depressiver Verstimmung. Es ist daher auch möglich, im Rahmen dieser Forschungsprojekte Subfragestellungen zu bearbeiten, die von der Hauptfragestellung des Projekts unabhängig sind. Kommen Sie gern auf uns zu. Wir können sowohl die inhaltliche als auch die zeitliche Ausgestaltung der Abschlussarbeit gern individuell mit Ihnen abstimmen.

Aktuelle Forschungsprojekte: 

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The Missing Link: How Stress Impacts Inference in Healthy Individuals and Those at Risk for Psychosis

Background:
Imagine you see a woman walking a cute dog in the park, the next they you observe a man walking the same dog. From these separate events you might infer that the man and the woman are a couple, despite you never observed them together. This example shows that our brain can infer associations by flexibly combining memories. Without such processes we would need to observe everything directly, i.e., until you observe the man and the woman together it would be impossible to know that they are together. The flexible use of memories was shown to depend on medial temporal structures such as the hippocampus (e.g., Zeithamova et al., 2012) which are known to be affected by stress (e.g.,  Schwabe et al., 2022). Importantly, previous studies have identified hippocampal abnormalities in disorders such as schizophrenia (e.g., Small et al., 2011) and have also reported deficits in memory integration (e.g., Armstrong et al., 2018), further highlighting the dependence on the hippocampus. Thus, in this project we aim to unravel the processes behind memory integration, focusing on the impact of stress and prodromal stages of psychosis.

Design:
Participants will perform a 2-day associative inference task in which they will learn to link different items. During learning they will undergo a stress manipulation or a control condition. Neural responses are measured using EEG. Furthermore, physiological measures such as electrodermal activity and blood pressure are included. Next to these (neuro)physiological measures, multiple psychological constructs such as anxiety, psychotic experiences and stress are measured using various questionnaires.

Importantly, since the sample is set to include a healthy control group as well as a high-risk psychosis group, clinical interviews such as SCID and CAARMS are conducted for screening purposes.

Options for Students:
This project is well-suited for students who want to conduct basic research with clinical relevance. You can either work on a research question associated with main goal of the project (i.e., memory integration) or you can come up with your own research question which can be answered with the given measures. Your involvement in the project would include participants recruitment (incl. conducting clinical interviews), help with data collection (incl. EEG and EDA) and (of course) working on your research question. The project offers the opportunity to analyze various (physiological) data (incl. EEG).

Timeline:
Data collection was started in February 2026
Contact: tim.dressler@uni-hamburg.de(tim.dressler"AT"uni-hamburg.de ) 
(Please include your ToR)
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Stress and Adaptive Learning: How Acute Stress Alters Dynamic Belief Updating

Background:
Imagine you take the same route to university every day. Usually, traffic follows a predictable pattern, allowing you to estimate how long your commute will take. One morning, however, you encounter an unexpected traffic jam. Is it just a temporary delay, or has road construction begun, meaning you should choose a different route in the future? To make good decisions, you must constantly distinguish between random events and genuine changes in your environment. This ability to flexibly adapt beliefs in response to new information is known as dynamic belief updating.
Successful belief updating depends on a distributed brain network involving the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, striatum, salience network, and the locus coeruleus–noradrenergic system, all of which contribute to detecting surprising events and adapting behavior. Acute stress is known to alter the function of these brain systems, yet it remains largely unknown how stress affects our ability to distinguish meaningful environmental changes from random fluctuations. Understanding these mechanisms is important because impaired adaptive learning has been implicated in several psychiatric disorders and may contribute to maladaptive decision making under stress.
In this project, we investigate how acute stress influences dynamic belief updating by combining computational modeling with functional MRI, clinical background data, and endocrine measures.

Design:
Participants complete a three-block dynamic belief updating task while undergoing functional MRI. During the second block, participants are randomly assigned to either an acute stress condition or a non-stress control condition. The stress manipulation consists of an MRI-compatible version of the Socially Evaluated Cold Pressor Test, combining cold stimulation, unpredictable mild electric shocks, and social evaluation. Throughout the experiment, we continuously record brain activity using fMRI together with pupil size, heart rate, respiration, and electrodermal activity. Saliva samples are collected repeatedly to quantify cortisol responses, and subjective stress ratings are obtained after the stress manipulation. Before the MRI session, participants complete an extensive battery of cognitive tasks and questionnaires assessing personality traits, anxiety, stress, and other psychological variables.

Options for Students:
This project is ideal for students interested in cognitive neuroscience, stress research, learning, and neuroimaging. Students can either investigate one of the project's main research questions—for example, how stress influences learning, uncertainty processing, or neural representations—or develop their own research question using the rich behavioral, physiological, and neuroimaging dataset.
Student involvement includes participant recruitment, data collection (including MRI preparation and physiological recordings), data preprocessing, and independent data analysis. Depending on individual interests, projects may focus on behavioral modeling, computational neuroscience, fMRI, or multimodal data integration.

Timeline:
Data collection started in 2026 and is currently ongoing.

Contact:
hendrik.heinbockel"AT"uni-hamburg.de 
(Please include your ToR.)