Maximilian König

Maximilian König, MSc
PhD Candidate, Psychologist at Leiden University

I am a psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist with 10 years of international research experience across Germany, the UK, the US, and the Netherlands. My doctoral research examined the neurocognitive, social, and psychological consequences of childhood adversity, particularly the factors shaping mental health risk and resilience in young people.

I received my BSc in Psychology from Goethe University Frankfurt (2017) and my MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience with distinction from University College London (2018). Before moving to the Netherlands, I conducted research at New York University and the University of Oxford to investigate neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying age-related changes in learning and decision-making. More information about my previous research experienced can be found here.

Please note that I got married in summer 2023 and changed my surname from Scheuplein to König.

My academic CV is available here.

Email: koenig_maximilian@outlook.com
Pronouns: he/him

LinkedIn • Google Scholar • Bluesky

Research
Approximately 60% of young people worldwide experience at least one form of childhood adversity before turning 18. This can include experiences such as abuse or neglect (maltreatment), parental mental illness, bullying, or exposure to war. Chronic and repeated exposure to these often co-occurring stressors require young people to adapt their neurobiological, psychological, and social functioning, ultimately increasing the risk for later-life mental health problems. However, a substantial proportion of resilient young people are able to maintain or regain their mental health despite these experiences. Research increasingly shows that the availability of high-quality friendship support is a key protective factor against the emergence and maintenance of mental health problems in young people with childhood adversity. Hence, my PhD research examined the neurocognitive and psychological mechanisms underlying these friendship buffering effects, aiming to inform preventative intervention efforts.

Selected Publications

König, M., Buimer, E., Wessels, P., Quist, R., Verspeelt, E., Rius Ottenheim, N., van der Wee, N., van der Werff, S., Bos, P., Liem, M., Peris, T. S., Hitchcock, C., Will, G-J., & van Harmelen, A-L. (under review). Friendship buffering and autobiographical memory specificity in young people with childhood adversity. PsyArXiv.
Preprint
König, M., Smith, A. J., Moreno-López, L., Davidson, E., Dauvermann, M., Orellana, S., McCormick, E. M., Peris, T. S., Kaser, M., Ioannidis, K., & van Harmelen, A-L. (2025). Friendship buffering effects on mental health symptoms before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a UK longitudinal study of young people with childhood adversity. Development and Psychopathology.
Article
König, M., Berhe, O., Ioannidis, K., Orellana, S., Davidson, E., Kaser, M., Raise Consortium, Moreno-López, L., & van Harmelen, A-L. (2023). The stress-buffering role of friendships in young people with childhood threat experiences: a preliminary report. European Journal of Psychotraumatology.
Article
Scheuplein, M. & van Harmelen, A-L. (2022). The importance of friendships in reducing brain responses to stress in adolescents exposed to childhood adversity: a pre-registered systematic review. Current Opinion in Psychology.
Article

Publications

Journal Articles

* indicates joint first authorship | Google Scholar • ORCID • OSF

9. König, M., Smith, A. J., Moreno-López, L., Davidson, E., Dauvermann, M., Orellana, S., McCormick, E. M., Peris, T. S., Kaser, M., Ioannidis, K., & van Harmelen, A-L. (2025). Friendship buffering effects on mental health symptoms before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a UK longitudinal study of young people with childhood adversity. Development and Psychopathology, 1-16.
Article • Open Access Resources

8. König, M., Berhe, O., Ioannidis, K., Orellana, S., Davidson, E., Kaser, M., Raise Consortium, Moreno-López, L., & van Harmelen, A-L. (2023). The stress-buffering role of friendships in young people with childhood threat experiences: a preliminary report. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 14:2, 2281971.
Article • Open Access Resources

7. Nussenbaum, K.*, Martin, R. E.*, Maulhardt, S., Yang, Y., Bizzell-Hatcher, G., Bhatt, N. S., König, M., Rosenbaum, G. M., O'Doherty, J. P., Cockburn, J., Hartley, C. A. (2023). Novelty and uncertainty differentially drive exploration across development. eLife, 12:e84260.
Article • Open Access Resources

6. González-García, N.*, Buimer, E. L.*, Moreno-López, L., Sallie, S. N., Váša, F., Lim, S., Romero-Garcia, R., Scheuplein, M., Whitaker, K. J., Jones, P. B., Dolan, R. J., Fonagy, P., Goodyer, I., Bullmore, E. T., van Harmelen, A-L., NSPN consortium (2023). Resilient functioning is associated with altered structural brain network topology in adolescents exposed to childhood adversity. Development and Psychopathology, 1-11.
Article

5. Scheuplein, M., Ahmed, S. P., Foulkes, L., Griffin, C., Chierchia, G., & Blakemore, S-J. (2023). Perspective taking and memory for self- and town-related information in male adolescents and young adults. Cognitive Development, 67, 101356.
Article

4. Wittmann, M. K.*, Scheuplein, M.*, Gibbons, S. G., & Noonan, M. P. (2023). Local and global reward learning in the lateral frontal cortex show differential development during human adolescence. PLoS Biology, 21(3).
Article

3. Saragosa-Harris, N.*, Chaku, N.*, MacSweeney, N.*, Williamson, V. G.*, Scheuplein, M., Feola, B., ... & Mills, K. (2022). A practical guide for researchers and reviewers using the ABCD Study and other large longitudinal datasets. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 55(6).
Article

2. Scheuplein, M. & van Harmelen, A-L. (2022). The importance of friendships in reducing brain responses to stress in adolescents exposed to childhood adversity: a pre-registered systematic review. Current Opinion in Psychology, 45(6).
Article • Open Access Resources

1. Nussenbaum, K., Scheuplein, M., Phaneuf C. V., Evans, M. D., & Hartley C. A. (2020). Moving developmental research online: comparing in-lab and web-based studies of model-based reinforcement learning. Collabra: Psychology, 6(1).
Article • Open Access Resources

Book Chapters

2. Vermeulen, S., Scheuplein, M., van Harmelen, A-L., Alink, L. (2023). Kindermishandeling: Impact op slachtoffer en maatschappij. Handboek Slachtoffers.
Chapter

1. Scheuplein, M., Vermeulen, S., van Harmelen, A-L., & Alink, L. (2023). Child maltreatment and victimization. Handbook of Clinical Neurology: Brain and Crime 197, 147-160.
Chapter

Science Communication

5. König, M. (May 2024). Short interview about my PhD work on friendship stress buffering in young people with childhood adversity.
Leidraad (Dutch alumni magazine Leiden University), Interview

4. Scheuplein, M. & van Harmelen, A-L. (September 2022). Help your foster child be resilient.
BIJ ONS thuis in een gezin (Dutch magazine for foster families), Interview

3. Scheuplein, M. & van Harmelen, A-L. (April 2021). Building resilience in young people.
Leiden Psychology Blog, Article

2. Science Action and Advocacy Network (July 2020). Developmentally informed memo of support advocating for the cessation of arresting and prosecuting children under 12 as juvenile delinquents.

1. Scheuplein, M. (February 2019). Learning, decision-making, and the adolescent brain.
Oxford Medium, Article

Preprints

1. König, M., Buimer, E., Wessels, P., Quist, R., Verspeelt, E., Rius Ottenheim, N., van der Wee, N., van der Werff, S., Bos, P., Liem, M., Peris, T. S., Hitchcock, C., Will, G-J., & van Harmelen, A-L. (under review). Friendship buffering and autobiographical memory specificity in young people with childhood adversity. PsyArXiv.
Preprint • Open Access Resources

Friendship Stress Buffering in Young People with Childhood Adversity

#1: How does child maltreatment contribute to victimization?

For my first PhD project, I conducted a literature review examining the "cycle of victimization" — a well-documented pattern where individuals who experience child maltreatment are at greater risk of victimizing others later in life. This work explored several neurocognitive mechanisms underlying this cycle, such as attentional biases to threat, and investigated the protective role of social support in disrupting this pattern. A key takeaway from this research is that of course not all individuals who have experienced maltreatment are destined to perpetrate victimization. Instead, protective factors like social support can play a crucial role in breaking the cycle of victimization and fostering resilience.

Published in Handbook of Clinical Neurology: Brain and Crime.

#2: Do friendships reduce neural stress responses in young people with childhood adversity?

For my second PhD project, I conducted a preregistered systematic literature review to explore the existing body of knowledge on friendship stress buffering in young people with childhood adversity. Specifically, I searched for empirical studies published in English that investigated friendship effects on neurobiological mechanisms in adolescents and young adults (aged 10-24) with childhood adversity. After screening over 4,000 articles, it became apparent that only four studies met my search criteria. Out of these, only two studies directly tested for friendship stress buffering effects, underscoring the necessity for further research in this area.

Published in Current Opinion in Psychology.

#3: What are the neural mechanisms behind friendship stress buffering in young people with childhood adversity?

For my third PhD project, I analyzed cross-sectional behavioral and neuroimaging data to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying friendship stress buffering in young people with childhood adversity. This research took place at the University of Cambridge (UK) and involved 102 adolescents and young adults (aged 16-26), all of whom had experienced low to moderate levels of childhood adversity. Among other noteworthy findings, we showed that high-quality friendships were strongly associated with better mental health and that acute stress enhanced neural activity in five frontolimbic brain regions, including the left hippocampus. Additionally, we found that threat experiences may interact with friendship quality to predict left hippocampal reactivity to acute stress. However, future research is needed to validate and extend our findings.

Published in European Journal of Psychotraumatology.

#4: Did friendships help protect young people with childhood adversity from mental health challenges during COVID-19?

For my fourth PhD project, I analyzed longitudinal behavioral data from the same UK sample of young people with childhood adversity (see #3), but this time to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their mental health alongside friendship buffering effects on their symptomatology. To highlight a few of our key findings, we showed that compared to pre-pandemic baseline levels depressive symptoms significantly increased during the pandemic. We also showed that across four assessment timepoints, greater perceived friendship quality was associated with lower levels of depressive symptoms. In fact, high-quality friendship support before the pandemic buffered depressive symptoms during the pandemic through reducing perceived stress.

In press at Development and Psychopathology.

#5: Do friendships influence autobiographical memory processing in young people with childhood adversity?

For my final PhD project, I analyzed cross-sectional behavioral data to investigate the role of friendship support in buffering perceived stress and depressive symptoms, as well as its relationship with autobiographical memory specificity, in 100 young people (aged 18-24) with childhood adversity. While more severe childhood adversity was linked to higher levels of depressive symptoms, stronger friendship support was associated with lower perceived stress and fewer depressive symptoms. However, friendship support did not appear to influence autobiographical memory specificity.

Preprint available on PsyArXiv.

Resilient Minds

I founded an international platform for early career researchers studying stress resilience and developmental psychopathology to provide networking opportunities and a forum to showcase current research. Up until 2023, I co-organized and led 38 meetings featuring interdisciplinary researchers from the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, and Norway. Resilient Minds meetings take place online and everyone is welcome to join the group.

Want to join the group? Sing up here.
Recaps: Fall 2022 • Spring 2022 • Fall 2021 • Spring 2021

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