About me

I am an experimental psychologist currently working as a postdoc at the Experimental Psychology department of Utrecht University. I received a PhD from Leipzig University on a project combining sentence production and working memory. During my postdoc at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in Nijmegen I also became interested in non-invasive brain stimulation as a tool to investigate language processing in the healthy brain. However, I remain somewhat skeptical particulary towards the efficacy of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), at least in the way it is currently being used, so part of my work also focuses on more methodological aspects of brain stimulation. After another postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, I returned to the Netherlands and am now working at Utrecht University in the group of Dennis Schutter. Here we focus on the role of the cerebellum in anger and aggression using mainly electrophysiological and brain stimulation methods. However, language is still close to my heart, so I'm trying to pursue some research on the side there as well.

Trivia: My favourite thing to do in R is plotting stuff; I have seen all episodes of Family Guy so many times that I can find a fitting quote for pretty much every daily situation (I hate Brian though); I believe the best album in the entire history of humankind is Turn On The Bright Lights by Interpol (people will argue about this, because Beatles and Stones and Led Zeppelin etc., but they probably weren't a teenager in the early 2000s); my cat has an Instagram.

Publications

Peer-reviewed publications

Klaus, J., & Schutter, D.J.L.G. (2021). Functional topography of anger and aggression in the human cerebellum. NeuroImage, 226, 117582. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117582

Klaus, J., & Hartwigsen, G. (2020). Failure to improve verbal fluency with transcranial direct current stimulation. Neuroscience, 449, 123-133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2020.09.003

Friehs, M.A., Klaus, J., Singh, T., Frings, C., & Hartwigsen, G. (2020). Perturbation of the right prefrontal cortex disrupts interference control. NeuroImage, 220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117279

Piai, V., Klaus, J., & Rossetto, E. (2020). The lexical nature of alpha-beta oscillations in context-driven word production. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 55, 100905. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2020.100905

Klaus, J., Schutter, D.J.L.G., & Piai, V. (2020). Transient perturbation of the left temporal cortex evokes plasticity-related reconfiguration of the lexical network. Human Brain Mapping, 41, 1061–1071. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24860

Klaus, J., & Hartwigsen, G. (2019). Dissociating semantic and phonological contributions of the left inferior frontal gyrus to language production. Human Brain Mapping, 40, 3279-3287. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24597

Klaus, J., & Schriefers, H. (2019). Bilingual word production. In: The Handbook of the Neuroscience of Multilingualism. Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119387725.ch10

Klaus, J., & Schriefers, H. (2018). An investigation of the role of working memory capacity and naming speed in phonological advance planning in language production. The Mental Lexicon, 13, 159-185. https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.17020.kla

Klaus, J., & Schutter, D.J.L.G. (2018c). Putting focus on transcranial direct current stimulation in language production studies. PLoS ONE, 13, e0202730. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202730

Klaus, J., & Schutter, D.J.L.G. (2018b). The role of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in language processing. Neuroscience, 377, 197-205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2018.03.002

Klaus, J., & Schutter, D.J.L.G. (2018a). Non-invasive brain stimulation to investigate language production in healthy speakers: A meta-analysis. Brain and Cognition, 123, 10-22. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2018.02.007

Klaus, J., Lemhöfer, K., & Schriefers, H. (2018). The second language interferes with picture naming in the first language: evidence for L2 activation during L1 production. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 33, 867-877. https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2018.1430837

Jescheniak, J.D., Kurtz, F., Schriefers, H., Günther, J., Klaus, J., and Mädebach, A. (2017). Words we do not say – Context effects on the phonological activation of lexical alternatives in speech production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 43, 1194-1206. http://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000352

Klaus, J., Mädebach, A., Oppermann, F., & Jescheniak, J. D. (2017). Planning sentences while doing other things at the same time: Effects of concurrent verbal and visuospatial working memory load. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70, 811-831. http://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2016.1167926

Work in progress

File drawer

Klaus, J., & Schriefers, H. Measuring verbal working memory capacity: A reading span task for laboratory and web-based use. http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/NJ48X
This was an attempt to introduce an online version of the reading span task in English, Dutch, and German. It never made it to a published paper, but the task (along with an operation span task) can still be taken here, and documentation (including clumsy analysis scripts in R) can be found on Github.

Presentations

Talks

Klaus, J., Mädebach, A., Oppermann, F., & Jescheniak, J.D. (2014, April). We plan when we can: Verbal working memory load reduces phonological, but not semantic planning scope in sentence production. Workgroup meeting “Psychology of Language”, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands.

Klaus, J., Mädebach, A., Oppermann, F., & Jescheniak, J.D. (2014, March). We plan when we can: Verbal working memory load reduces phonological, but not semantic planning scope in sentence production. Language production symposium at Conference of Experimental Psychologists, Gießen, Germany.

Klaus, J., Mädebach, A., & Jescheniak, J.D. (2013). The influence of visuospatial and verbal load on phonological advance planning in sentence production. Psycholinguistics in Flanders, Leuven, Belgium.

Poster Presentations

Klaus, J., & Hartwigsen, G. (2019b). Modulating verbal fluency performance in healthy adults with tDCS over the left prefrontal cortex. 11th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language, Helsinki, Finland.

Klaus, J., & Hartwigsen, G. (2019a). Semantic and phonological contributions of the left inferior frontal gyrus to language production. Annual Meeting of the Organization of Human Brain Mapping, Rome, Italy.

Klaus, J., Schutter, D.J.L.G., & Piai, V. (2018). Oscillatory brain responses in language production following transient disruption of the left middle temporal gyrus: A cTBS-EEG study. 10th International Workshop on Language Production, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Rossetto, E., Klaus, J., & Piai, V. (2018). The lexical nature of alpha-beta desynchronisation in context-driven word production. 10th International Workshop on Language Production, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Klaus, J., Lemhöfer, K., & Schriefers, H. (2017). Evidence for second language co-activation during first language production. 20th Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, Potsdam, Germany.

Klaus, J. (2016). Measuring verbal working memory capacity: A reading span task for lab and web use. Donders Poster Sessions, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Klaus, J., Mädebach, A., Oppermann, F., & Jescheniak, J.D. (2014, July). Verbal working memory load reduces phonological, but not semantic planning scope in sentence production. International Workshop on Language Production, Geneva, Switzerland.

Klaus, J., Mädebach, A., Oppermann, F., & Jescheniak, J.D. (2014, May). Verbal working memory load reduces phonological, but not semantic planning scope in sentence production. Psycholinguistics in Flanders, Oostende, Belgium.

Klaus, J., Mädebach, A., & Jescheniak, J.D. (2013, September). Phonological advance planning in sentence production: The influence of visuospatial and verbal load. 19th AMLaP (Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing), Marseille, France.

Klaus, J., Mädebach, A., & Jescheniak, J.D. (2013, March). Phonological advance planning in sentence production under verbal or spatial load. 55th Conference of Experimental Psychologists, Vienna, Austria.

Klaus, J., Oppermann, F., Jescheniak, J.D., & Schriefers, H. (2011). Phonologische Aktivierung des Verbs bei der Satzproduktion. 53rd Conference of Experimental Psychologists, Halle, Germany.