I am currently working at the Bingellab (Clinical Neurosciences) at the University Hospital Essen as a postdoctoral researcher. I did my PhD at the Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit at the University of Vienna. During this time, I was a visiting researcher in the Social Brain Lab at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam.

What are the behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying pain modulation via different treatment expectations?

In my Postdoc, I am using high-resolution fMRI combined with placebo hypoalgesia/nocebo hyperalgesia to find out more about the cognitive modulation of first-hand pain perception. Specifically, as part of the Collaborative Research Center 289 “Treatment Expectations” I am interested in the modulating role of positive and negative expectations on real and fake treatments.

Find out more about treatment expectations by following the SFB289’s Youtube channel and watching our recent animated film:

How do we empathize with another person in pain? What role does our own pain perception play?

My PhD research focused on the behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying shared representations between first-hand and empathy for pain, as well as their connection to prosocial behavior. Specifically, I was interested in 1) the necessity of somatosensory brain regions for feelings of empathy, and 2) whether we need our own pain processing system to empathize with and help others in pain.

Below is a short animation of my PhD research made by Scientistt:

You can also watch a video of my PhD defense presentation:

How can we improve the openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, scholarship, and education?

I am a member of the Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training (FORRT) where I am involved in multiple projects, such as the glossary, neurodiversity and impact. I am also leading the replications & reversals project. FORRT is always looking for new contributors and collaborators, so learn how to get involved here.

Mentors and Collaborators

• Ulrike Bingel from the Bingellab, University Hospital Essen (Germany)
• Philipp Kanske from the Psychopathology of the Social Brain group, University Dresden (Germany)
• Valeria Gazzola and Christian Keysers from the Social Brain Lab, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (Netherlands)
• Claus Lamm from the Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit, University of Vienna (Austria)
• Giorgia Silani from the Clinical Neuroscience Unit, University of Vienna (Austria)

Conference contributions

Collaborative hackathon “Feminist Ways of Doing - A hackathon collecting resources for feminist approaches to science”

• Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) meeting (2022)

Collaborative hackathons for FORRT’s “Replications and Reversals in Social Sciences” project

• Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) meeting (2022)
• Association for Interdisciplinary Metaresearch and Open Science (aimos) conference (2021)
• Psychological Science Accelerator (PSACON) conference (2021)

Another’s Pain vs. my Gain: Evidence of absence for a causal role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in costly decision-making

• Psychology and Brain Conference (2022)
• Austrian Society for Psychology meeting (2022)

Another’s pain in my social brain: How does placebo analgesia affect decisions to exert effort to reduce another’s pain?

• 46th joint annual meeting Psychology and the Brain (PuG) of the Division of Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology of the DGPs and DGPA (2021)
• Society for Social Neuroscience conference (2021)

Engaging with Open Science as Feminist Early Career Researchers: 6 Top Tips

• Open Science Conference (2021)

Effects of spatially-specific placebo analgesia on somatosensory responses during first-hand and empathy for pain

• International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) Virtual Series on Pain & Expo (2020)
• 9th IMPRS Neurocom Summer School, Leipzig, Germany (2019)
• 25th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM), Rome, Italy (2019)

Is your pain my pain? Effects of localized placebo analgesia on empathy for everyday painful situations

• 8th MindBrainBody Symposium of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (2021)
• Society for Neuroscience (SfN) Global Connectome (2021)
• 25th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM), Rome, Italy (2019)

Social pain and emotional egocentricity in high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder: Behavioral and neurophysiological evidence

• Self-Knowing-Others Workshop, Brussels, Belgium (2018)
• International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) Annual Meeting, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2018)
• Social Brain Symposium, Vienna, Austria (2018)
• Society for Psychophysiological Research (SPR) Annual Meeting, Vienna, Austria (2017)
• Salzburg Mind Brain Annual Meeting (SAMBA), Salzburg, Austria (2017)

Are you interested in interviewing me about my research or do you want me to write something for your media outlet? Contact me via helena.hartmann@uk-essen.de.

Written Work

• Check out my science communication project Science & Fiction, a place where scientific results and fictional stories intersect.

• Together with Claus Lamm, I answered a question for the German Gehirn & Geist magazine: “Was bewirkt Empathie im Gehirn?”

• I was part of a German blogpost for the In-Mind magazine on “What is open scholarship? And why does it need a dictionary?”.

• As part of IASP’s 2022 Global Year of Translating Pain Knowledge to Practice, I co-wrote a fact sheet about treatment expectations and the patient-physician interaction. The fact sheet is available in English, German, Japanese, Portuguese, & Spanish.

• I wrote a German In-Mind article about empathy and how we share the emotions of others, together with Markus Rütgen and Claus Lamm. Read the full article here. I also contributed two entries to the In-Mind glossary: Theorie der Geteilten Repräsentationen and Endogenes Opioidsystem.

Podcast appearances

• I talked to Lee Delaney from Curiosity Cake about my PhD, specifically what kinds of methods I employ to measure empathy for pain in brain and behavior.

• I was so lucky to be part of the episode “Ever Felt Someone’s Pain… In Your Butt?” by Every Little Thing. Learn all about vicarious pain and how we can feel someone else’s pain in our own body.

• I chatted with Aaron Halliday about my research on empathy, prosocial behavior and interoception, but also about making science relevant and accessible to everyone.

Interviews

• The Telekom employee magazine “You and Me Quarterly” interviewed me about why we share the emotions of other people.

• DiscoverPhDs asked me about my PhD research, what a typical work day looks like for me and what enjoyments and challenges my PhD entails. Have a look at the full interview.

• 1 Million Women in STEM (1MWIS), a global network providing the stories of women studying & working in STEM, asked me what I do, why I chose this field of research, what I would tell my younger self and why I love working in STEM. Have a look at my answers.

• Check out the German interview I did for my Twitter takeover at Real Scientists DE in May 2020.

Events

Together with Ulrike Bingel and Angelika Kunkel, we participated at the Self Help Day 2022 of the University Medicine Essen and educated patients and stakeholders about treatment expectations.

I was part of a Children’s University workshop at the University of Vienna, where we taught children about the brain, perspective taking and empathy.

Here I explained my research on empathy for pain and prosocial behavior in German at a science communication format called Kaffeeklatsch mit Wissenschaft hosted by the amazing Franziska Sattler in February 2021. Find the slides to this talk here.

Pint of Science (PoS) brings scientists to share their latest research with you! I was part of 2020’s “Beautiful Mind” event manager team to organize three exciting evenings all about neuroscience that were unfortunately cancelled due to COVID. In 2021, I also helped organize online events for PoS Amsterdam in 2021 (see for example here or here). More info on the Website.

Together with my PhD colleagues, I organized a booth at the Long Night of Research in Vienna all about research in psychology and social neuroscience in 2018. Have you ever experienced the rubberhand illusion? How do we investigate something called affective touch? Can we put awake dogs into an MR-scanner? And can you match all brains to their corresponding species?

Art of Neuroscience: Have a look at my application for the art competition all about neuroscience here.

Photo Competition “My Research in one Picture”: In 2018, my photo about my PhD research titled “Another’s Pain in my Placebo Brain” got into the Top 10 of winning photos. See the other photos or general information on the competition.

Other Activities

Project Encephalon

I joined the scientific advisory committee of Project Encephalon, an “international, trainee-led non-profit organization for neuroscience enthusiasts”.

MyMind

I support MyMind, a startup company in Vienna, as an external scientific advisor. They are developing Brain Hero, a Neurofeedback game to improve concentration levels and relaxation capabilities in individuals with autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

FemABC

Feminist Alliance Book Club (FemABC), founded in December 2020, is a monthly book club to read and discuss books centred around feminism and underrepresented genders. EVERYBODY is welcome to join! For more infomation, have a look at our Twitter or Goodreads pages. More info on the general idea and joining us can also be found here. If you have questions or want to become a member, write us an email at abc.feminist@gmail.com.

Lab studies in Essen

• Have a look at our currently running studies and trials here.

Lab studies in Amsterdam

• Here you can sign up to stay informed about current or future studies of the Social Brain Lab in Amsterdam!

Lab studies in Vienna

• Check out our SCAN-Unit Facebook Page to find out about current studies!

• Sign up on participants platforms of the Laboratory Administration for Behavioral Sciences or the Vienna Cognitive Science Hub to get regular study invitations in your inbox!