Luianta Verra

LIFE Fellow since 2022, MPI for Human Development

I am a PhD student at the Max Planck Research Group NeuroCode under the supervision of Nicolas Schuck and Ondrej Zika. My research focuses on learning and decision making in the aversive domain with a focus on generalization and replay. I am further interested in how these mechanisms relate to transdiagnostic psychiatric markers such as avoidance behavior in anxiety. To answer these questions I use behavioral data in combination with computational modelling and imaging techniques.
I received my BSc and MSc in Psychology from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. For my Bachelor’s thesis I worked on a project on fear learning and learning induced plasticity changes under the supervision of Stephan Moratti at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. For my Master’s thesis I studied how the brain integrates probabilistic information in order to take optimal decisions under the supervision of Nicolas Schuck and John-Dylan Haynes.

Dissertation project:

Mechanisms of aversive generalization, avoidance, and replay and their relationship to transdiagnostic aspects of anxiety

Publications

Hasenäcker, J., Verra, L., & Schroeder, S. (2019). Comparing length and frequency effects in children across modalities. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72(7), 1682–1691. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021818805063