Biomedizinische Bildgebung (AG Schwarzbach)

We investigate cognitive, computational, and metabolic foundations of experience and behavior, especially with respect to psychiatric ailments and disorders, such as depression and anxiety. Complex experiences and behaviors require that brain areas communicate with each other, and that this communication be flexible. By way of functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging, spectroscopy, and also mathematical models, we investigate whether, and in what way, this communication is disturbed in the presence of neuropsychiatric disorders. Furthermore, we investgate how emotions are represented in the brain, and whether a change in the physiological representations leads to altered experience and behavior.