Annekathrin Schacht

Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology
Georg-Elias-Müller-Institute of Psychology


Research Interests


  • Affective and motivational impacts on visual sensory processing
  • Emotion-cognition interplay in the processing of written and spoken language
  • Face processing, including emotional expressions, attractiveness, and face identity
  • Audiovisual integration of social signals in human communication



Education and Employment

2016 Professor, Department of Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany
2011Habilitation in Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HUB), Germany
2010 - 2016 Junior Research Group Leader, Courant Research Center Text structures, University of Göttingen
2010Guest Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
2010Visiting Professor, Université de Genève, Switzerland
2009Interim Professor of Psychology of Motivation and Emotion, University of Potsdam, Germany
2008 - 2010Project leader, “Emotions in Word and Face Processing”, funded by the Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Berlin, Germany
2008 - 2009Post-doctoral Researcher/Assistant Professor, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
2008PhD (Dr. rer. nat., Psychology), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin



Selected honours and awards

2010 Early Career Achievement Award (Förderpreis) of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
2010Invited Professor, CISA, Geneva, Switzerland
2009Top Reviewer in 2009 for Biological Psychology


Selected publications

Rossi V, Vanlessen N, Bayer M, Grass A, Pourtois G, Schacht A (2017). Motivational salience modulates early visual cortex responses across task sets. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, epub ahead of print, doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_01093

Bayer M, Rossi V, Vanlessen N, Grass A, Schacht A, Pourtois G (2017). Independent effects of motivation and spatial attention in the human visual cortex. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, epub ahead of print, doi: 10.1093/scan/nsw162

Maruo Y, Schacht A, Sommer W, Masaki H (2016). Impacts of motivational valence on the error-related negativity elicited by full and partial errors. Biological Psychology 114: 108-16

Bayer M, Schacht A (2014). Event-related brain responses to emotional words, pictures and faces? A cross-domain comparison. Frontiers in Psychology 5: 1106

Schacht A (2013). Reviving a forgotten dimension? Potency in affective neuroscience. In: Fontaine J, Scherer KR, Soriano C (Eds.), Components of Emotional Meaning: A Sourcebook. New York: Oxford University Press, 261-70

Rellecke J, Sommer W, Schacht A (2012). Does processing of emotional facial expressions depend on intention? Time-resolved evidence from event-related brain potentials. Biological Psychology 90: 23-32

Recio G, Sommer W, Schacht A (2011). Electrophysiological correlates of perceiving and evaluating static and dynamic facial emotional expressions. Brain Research 1376: 66-75

Rellecke J, Palazova M, Sommer W, Schacht A (2011). On the automaticity of emotion processing in words and faces: Event-related brain potentials evidence from a superficial task. Brain and Cognition 77: 23-32

Wilhelm O, Herzmann G, Kunina O, Danthiir V, Schacht A, Sommer W (2010). Individual differences in perceiving and recognizing faces? One element of social cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 99: 530-48

Schacht A , Sommer W (2009). Emotions in word and face processing: early and late cortical responses. Brain and Cognition 69: 538-550