Responsibilities
Heisenberg-Professor for Clinical Developmental Psychology, Head of Autism Outpatient Clinic, Senior Psychologist of Psychiatric Transition Ward
Contact
Email:
Christine.Falter@med.uni-muenchen.de
Website:
Research group website
Further Information
Main Focus
My main research focuses on objective measurement of social interaction using portable technology and digital phenotyping of intra- and interpersonal processes (e.g. synchrony, concordance). The tools we use are dual portable eye-tracking, automated movement synchrony analysis, automatized facial expression extraction, automatized speech pattern analysis, heart rate and EDA measurement via wearables, portable EEG, and oxytocin/OXTR measures. To improve mechanistic understanding, we study neuronal processing of synchrony perception (fMRI) using our previously extracted markers as stimuli.
Beyond neurodevelopmental disorders, we study different mental health diagnoses associated with social interaction difficulties such as borderline personality disorder, social anxiety and psychosis, and transdiagnostic social behaviour.
Selected publications
Bierlich, A.M., Scheel, N.T., Traiger, L.S., Keeser, D., Tepest, R., Georgescu, A.L., Koehler, J.C., Plank, I.S., & Falter-Wagner, C.M. (in press). Neural mechanisms of social interaction perception: Observing interpersonal synchrony modulates Action Observation Network activation and is spared in autism. Human Brain Mapping.
Koehler, J. C., Dong, M. S., Nelson, A. M., Fischer, S., Späth, J., Plank, I. S., Koutsouleris, N., & Falter-Wagner, C. M. (2024). Machine Learning Classification of Autism Spectrum Disorder based on Reciprocity in Naturalistic Social Interactions. Translational Psychiatry, 14(1), 76.
Bloch, C., Tepest, R., Koeroglu, S., Feikes, K., Jording, M., Vogeley, K., & Falter-Wagner, C. M. (2024). Interacting with autistic virtual characters: Timing of nonverbal behaviour influences participants’ perception. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 274, 1585–1599.
Gernert, C., Nelson, A., Falkai, P., & Falter-Wagner, C. M. (2024). Synchrony in Psychotherapy: High physiological positive concordance predicts symptom reduction and negative concordance predicts symptom aggravation. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 33(1), e1978.
Allenmark, F., Shi, Z., Pistorius, R., Theisinger, L., Koutsouleris, N., Falkai, P., Mueller, H., & Falter-Wagner, C. M. (2021). Acquisition and Use of ‘Priors’ in Autism: Typical in Deciding Where to Look, Atypical in Deciding What is There. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 51, 3744-3758.