MIND CHILD – Nico Bast's lab

Author: mind-child

  • paper on sensory processing in autism and beyond

    —

    by

    mind-child
    in

    Anna Katharina Müller published her first first-author paper on a potential mechanism of different sensory processing autism and other mental health conditions: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-026-03948-0 This is a great milestone and underlines that the locus-coeruleus norepinephrine (LC-NE) system is a neuromodulatory mechanism worth further exploration in clinical neuroscience. With pupillometry, we provide a non-invasive and scalable method…

  • Nico Bast elected to executive board of WGAS

    —

    by

    mind-child
    in

    Nico Bast has been elected by the German Society of Autism Research to the executive board as 2nd deputy president. This election was part of the renewal of the executive board for the new election period of 2026-2030. The election took part during the annual congress for Autism Research 2026 in Heidelberg

  • Christian Lemler defended his dissertation

    —

    by

    mind-child
    in

    My former PhD. student Christian (that I jointly supervised with Prof. Freitag) successfully defended his dissertation at the Medical Faculty Frankfurt. The core paper was a machine learning + computer vision approach to objectively assess repetitive behavior in autistic children: Paper. Big congrats!

  • Elena Maher joins the team

    —

    by

    mind-child
    in

    We are happy to welcome Elena Maher as a research intern for the coming months. She studied medicine in Prescia/Italy and will complement the DYNAMIC team with her expertise

  • MIND-CHILD lab at the ICNF symposium 2025

    —

    by

    mind-child
    in

    We were very happy to present the state of our current work at the ICNF symposium 2025 (Interdisciplinary Center for Neuroscience Frankfurt): Nico Bast gave a talk while Paula, Iskra, and Anna presented their work as posters. Thanks, for all the input and feedback!

  • paper on sensory processing and arousal regulation published

    —

    by

    mind-child
    in

    We justed published our latest article on the EU-AIMS LEAP data set on different sensory processing in autistic individuals, which might be explained by an increased arousal regulation: Bast, N., Ahmad, J., Mason, L. et al. Locus coeruleus tonic upregulation increases selectivity to inconspicuous auditory information in autistic compared to non-autistic individuals: a combined pupillometry and electroencephalography…

  • Emma Hewitt and Munib Uddin join the team

    —

    by

    mind-child
    in

    Emma is visiting our lab for the next months as part of the Goethe University international GREP program, while Munib will conduct his Bachelor’s Thesis as under close supervision by Jan Ohlenmacher. Welcome you all!

  • talk at symposium on suicide prevention

    —

    by

    mind-child
    in

    We were happy to present our clinic’s low-threshold support of “early detection of mental health (see link)” at the annual symposium of suicide prevention at the Polytechnic Foundation of Frankfurt am Main. Looking forward to further disseminate the important topic of mental health in young children!

  • paper on early intervention in autism

    —

    by

    mind-child
    in

    We just published a paper in which we showed arousal regulation as relevant mediator in autism early intervention therapy. Check it out: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00787-025-02738-1

  • Top-Rated Abstract at INSAR 2025

    —

    by

    mind-child
    in

    Our poster ““Experimental Manipulation of Sensory Processing in Electroencephalography and Pupillometry”  (Abstract ID# 50079, Final Number 405.244)” received a top-rated abstract award for INSAR 2025 based on the SEGA project results (project lead: Anna K. Müller) Nico Bast will be presenting the respective poster at INSAR 2025 on Thursday 1pm at the poster session (Abstract…