Weroni­ka Potok 

Title

Mod­u­lat­ing adult human behav­ior through noise and pupil­lary feedback 

Abstract

Neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion tech­niques offer a promis­ing avenue for under­stand­ing and influ­enc­ing brain func­tion with poten­tial appli­ca­tions in men­tal health and well-being. This talk will cov­er two com­ple­men­tary approach­es to neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion: tran­scra­nial elec­tri­cal stim­u­la­tion (tES) and pupil-based biofeedback. 

First, find­ings from three projects inves­ti­gat­ing the acute effects of tES on motor and visu­al func­tions. These stud­ies focused on real-time (online) mod­u­la­tion of cor­ti­cal activ­i­ty, pro­vid­ing insights into the func­tion­al impact of tES on sen­so­ri­mo­tor processing. 

Sec­ond, a nov­el pupil-based biofeed­back as a neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion tech­nique, which enables indi­vid­u­als to self-reg­u­late their arousal lev­els via real-time feed­back on pupil size. This approach cap­i­tal­izes on the con­nec­tion between pupil dynam­ics and activ­i­ty in the locus coeruleus-nora­dren­a­line sys­tem. Find­ings will be pre­sent­ed on how vol­un­tary pupil con­trol may influ­ence neu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gy, cor­ti­cal excitabil­i­ty, and sub­jec­tive stress per­cep­tion. Ongo­ing research aims to trans­late these insights into prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in explor­ing the poten­tial for mit­i­gat­ing stress respons­es through biofeed­back training. 

By inte­grat­ing non-inva­sive brain stim­u­la­tion and biofeed­back method­olo­gies, this research con­tributes to the devel­op­ment of inno­v­a­tive, acces­si­ble inter­ven­tions that may enhance men­tal health and cog­ni­tive performance. 

Biog­ra­phy

Weroni­ka Potok-Szy­bińs­ka was born in 1992 in Poland. She stud­ied Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence and Psy­chol­o­gy at Adam Mick­iewicz Uni­ver­si­ty (AMU) in Poz­nań. In 2014, she received an Eras­mus Schol­ar­ship and spent one semes­ter study­ing at the Insti­tute of Psy­chol­o­gy at Johannes Guten­berg Uni­ver­si­ty Mainz, Ger­many. She earned her Master’s degrees in Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence in July 2016 and in Psy­chol­o­gy in June 2017, con­duct­ing research for her the­ses in the Action and Cog­ni­tion Lab­o­ra­to­ry at AMU. Her first project explored the cere­bral basis of plan­ning move­ments using rTMS. The sec­ond project assessed hemi­spher­ic dom­i­nance in lan­guage pro­duc­tion and com­pre­hen­sion through fMRI analysis. 

After com­plet­ing her clin­i­cal intern­ships at neu­ro­log­i­cal and psy­chi­atric wards in Poz­nań, Weroni­ka start­ed a research trainee­ship in the Sec­tion of Move­ment Dis­or­ders and Neu­rostim­u­la­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter, Johannes Guten­berg Uni­ver­si­ty Mainz. There, she con­tributed to stud­ies on motor and stress-relat­ed cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing in patients with brain dis­or­ders such as Parkinson’s dis­ease and Mul­ti­ple Scle­ro­sis, uti­liz­ing var­i­ous imag­ing (EEG, fMRI) and stim­u­la­tion (TMS, rTMS) meth­ods. In May 2018, she joined the Neur­al Con­trol of Move­ment Lab at ETH Zurich as a PhD stu­dent. In 2022, Weroni­ka earned her PhD in Neu­ro­science from ETH Zurich, spe­cial­iz­ing in brain stim­u­la­tion tech­niques (TMS, tES). Her doc­tor­al research inves­ti­gat­ed the effects of tran­scra­nial ran­dom noise stim­u­la­tion on visu­al and motor func­tions with­in the frame­work of sto­chas­tic res­o­nance the­o­ry. She con­tin­ues her work at ETH Zurich as a post­doc­tor­al researcher. 

Weronika’s research focus­es on neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion through biofeed­back pro­to­cols and non-inva­sive brain stim­u­la­tion to mod­u­late brain func­tion. Her inter­ests encom­pass stress resilience and inno­v­a­tive strate­gies for pro­mot­ing men­tal health. Cur­rent­ly, she inves­ti­gates how self-reg­u­la­tion of arousal influ­ences cor­ti­cal excitabil­i­ty, neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, and stress respons­es. She is also involved in projects on hand func­tion reha­bil­i­ta­tion and the effects of vagus nerve stim­u­la­tion on brain function. 

https://​ncm​.hest​.ethz​.ch/​t​h​e​-​g​r​o​u​p​/​t​e​a​m​/​w​e​r​o​n​i​k​a​-​p​o​t​o​k​.​h​tml