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Mag. Dr. Christina Plamberger
Postdoc

Department of Psychology
Hellbrunner Straße 34, 5020 Salzburg, Austria

Tel.: +43 662 80445137
E-Mail:

Consultation hour: by arrangement
Research group: Laboratory for Sleep, Cognition and Consciousness Research

Education:

  • 2011-2014 PhD at the University of Salzburg (Department of Psychology)
  • 2007-2011 Biology studies at the University of Salzburg (leading to the award of a Mag.rer.nat)

Professional experience:

  • since 2019 Postdoc at the University of Salzburg (Department of Psychology)
  • 2010-2011 Research assistant at the University of Salzburg (Department of Biology)

Research:

By using electrophysiological methods (EEG) and the Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA), an antibody-based detection method to determine hormone concentrations in saliva, I try to understand how hormones influence our brain activity and thus our behavior and our sleep. On the physiological level, I am particularly interested in the influence of sex hormones (progesterone, estrogen), cortisol and melatonin on different EEG frequency bands (e.g., alpha and theta) as well as objective sleep parameters. At the behavioral level, I explore the relationship between different hormone concentrations and attention- and memory performance. Three different populations are of interest for my research: (1) women with a natural menstrual cycle and thus natural cycle-dependent hormone fluctuations, (2) women who take synthetic hormones daily in the form of hormonal contraceptives, (3) women during pregnancy, which have extremely high sex hormone levels.

Key publications:

  • Plamberger, C.P., Van Wijk, H., Kerschbaum, H., Pletzer, B., Gruber, G., Oberascher, K., Dresler, M., Hoedlmoser, K. (2020). Impact of menstrual cycle phase, progesterone and oral contraceptives on sleep and overnight memory consolidation. Journal of Sleep Research, 29, 1-14.
  • Brötzner, C.P., Klimesch, W., Kerschbaum, H.H. (2015a). Associations of endogenous 17-β-estradiol with theta amplitude and performance in semantic categorization in young women. Neuroscience, 284, 685-692.
  • Brötzner, C.P., Klimesch, W., Kerschbaum, H.H. (2015). Progesterone-associated increase in ERP amplitude correlates with an improvement in performance in a spatial attention paradigm. Brain Research, 1595, 74–83.
  • Brötzner, C.P., Klimesch, W., Doppelmayr, M., Zauner, A., Kerschbaum, H.H. (2014). Resting state alpha frequency is associated with menstrual cycle phase, estradiol and use of oral contraceptives. Brain Research, 1577, 36-44.