Bertalan Polner is a postdoctoral researcher working with Hanneke den Ouden at the Donders Centre for Cognition since 2022 December.

How do we tell whether it matters what we do? Bertalan is interested in the cognitive and neural mechanisms that support the estimation of the controllability of the environment, and the impact of these estimates on subsequent learning and decision-making. He will also study how individual differences in controllability estimates (i.e. tendencies to expect more or less control over the world) are associated with mental health. Bertalan will work with behavioural experiments combined with psychopharmacology and cognitive computational modelling. Also, he will perform Experience Sampling Method (ESM) studies to investigate the daily life implications.

Bertalan obtained his BA and MA in Psychology at the University of Szeged. During his MA, he also studied at KU Leuven for a semester. In 2017, he completed his PhD at the Laboratory for Perception & Cognition and Clinical Neuroscience at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics with Szabolcs Keri. Bertalan contributed to understanding the attentional and associative mechanisms by which dopaminergic treatment may cause psychotic-like experiences and enhanced creativity in patients with Parkinson’s disease. Later on, he turned his attention toward psychotic-like phenomena in the general population and their association with variability in cognitive processes (e.g. perception, learning, and problem-solving) and sleep quality.

E-mail * Radboud University webpage * Google Scholar