Dr. Maria Waltmann
Dr. Maria Waltmann
Marcusstr. 9-11
| 2025 - today | Reiterlab at the University of Würzburg (PI: Andrea Reiter) |
| 2024 | Doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) - University of Würzburg |
| 2020 - today | Neuroscience in Developmental Psychiatry Lab at the University Hospital of Würzburg (PI: Lorenz Deserno) |
| 2018 - 2020 | O'Brain Lab at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig (PI: Annette Horstmann) |
| 2017 | M.Sc. in Neuroscience - King's College London |
| 2016 | B.Sc. in Psychology - University of Heidelberg |
| 2016 | B.A. in Philosophy/Anglistics - University of Heidelberg |
2025:
Fröhner, J. H., Waltmann, M., Reiter, A. M. F., Kräplin, A., & Smolka, M. N. (2025). Relevance of Probabilistic Reversal Learning for Adolescent Drinking Trajectories. Addiction Biology, 30(3), e70026. https://doi.org/10.1111/adb.70026
2024:
Aster, H.-C., Waltmann, M., Busch, A., Romanos, M., Gamer, M., Maria van Noort, B., Beck, A., Kappel, V., & Deserno, L. (2024). Impaired flexible reward learning in ADHD patients is associated with blunted reinforcement sensitivity and neural signals in ventral striatum and parietal cortex. NeuroImage: Clinical, 103588. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2024.103588
Herzog, N., Hartmann, H., Janssen, L. K., Waltmann, M., Fallon, S. J., Deserno, L., & Horstmann, A. (2024). Working memory gating in obesity: Insights from a case-control fMRI study. Appetite, 195, 107179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2023.107179
Scholz, V., Waltmann, M., Herzog, N., Horstmann, A., & Deserno, L. (2024). Decrease in decision noise from adolescence into adulthood mediates an increase in more sophisticated choice behaviours and performance gain. PLOS Biology, 22(11), e3002877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002877
Waltmann, M., Herzog, N., Reiter, A. M. F., Villringer, A., Horstmann, A., & Deserno, L. (2024). Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying differential reinforcement learning from wins and losses in obesity with and without binge eating. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2024.06.002
2023:
Herzog, N., Hartmann, H., Jannsen, L. K., Kanyamibwa, A., Waltmann, M., Kovacs, P., Deserno, L., Fallon, S. J., Villringer, A., & Horstmann, A. (2023). Impaired updating of working memory representations in individuals with high BMI: evidence for dopaminergic mechanisms. eLife, 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.11.03.565528
Scholz, V., Waltmann, M., Herzog, N., Reiter, A., Horstmann, A., & Deserno, L. (2023). Cortical Grey Matter Mediates Increases in Model-Based Control and Learning from Positive Feedback from Adolescence to Adulthood. The Journal of Neuroscience, 43(12), 2178 LP - 2189. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1418-22.2023
Waltmann, M., Herzog, N., Reiter, A. M. F., Villringer, A., Horstmann, A., & Deserno, L. (2023a). Diminished reinforcement sensitivity in adolescence is associated with enhanced response switching and reduced coding of choice probability in the medial frontal pole. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 60, 101226. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2023.101226
2022:
Waltmann, M., Schlagenhauf, F., & Deserno, L. (2022). Sufficient reliability of the behavioural and computational readouts of a probabilistic reversal learning task. Behaviour Research Methods. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01739-7
Zech, H., Waltmann, M., Lee, Y., Reichert, M., Bedder, R. L., Rutledge, R. B., Deeken, F., Wenzel, J., Wedemeyer, F., Aguilera, A., Aslan, A., Bach, P., Bahr, N. S., Ebrahimi, C., Fischbach, P. C., Ganz, M., Garbusow, M., Großkopf, C. M., Heigert, M., ... Deserno, L. (2022). Measuring self-regulation in everyday life: Reliability and validity of smartphone-based experiments in alcohol use disorder. Behaviour Research Methods. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-022-02019-8
2021:
Waltmann, M., Herzog, N., Horstmann, A., & Deserno, L. (2021). Loss of control over eating: A systematic review of task based research into impulsive and compulsive processes in binge eating. Neuroscience & Biobehavioural Reviews, 129, 330-350. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.07.016
2019:
Janssen, L. K., Herzog, N., Waltmann, M., Breuer, N., Wiencke, K., Rausch, F., Hartmann, H., Poessel, M., & Horstmann, A. (2019). Lost in Translation? On the Need for Convergence in Animal and Human Studies on the Role of Dopamine in Diet-Induced Obesity. Current Addiction Reports, 6(3), 229-257. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40429-019-00268-w
Waltmann, M., O'Daly, O., Egerton, A., McMullen, K., Kumari, V., Barker, G. J., Williams, S. C. R., & Modinos, G. (2019). Multi-echo fMRI, resting-state connectivity, and high psychometric schizotypy. NeuroImage: Clinical, 21, 101603. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.NICL.2018.11.013
My research focuses on reinforcement learning, decision-making behaviour and motivational processes in development, psychiatric risk and illness. In the studies I am involved in, we combine self-report, cognitive tasks and neuroimaging and use mathematical modelling to understand their interrelationships. In the future, I would also like to use these methods to explore the role of metacognition in psychiatric risk, illness and treatment, as well as the mechanisms that make poverty and chronic stress such important predictors of mental illness.
