Faculty Members of the Max Planck School of Cognition

Research interests: • development of a multilevel, multimodal atlas of the human brain • cytoarchitectonic, molecular and fiber architecture of the brain • image analysis, high-performance computing and big data analytics • Brain function and behavior • ethics

Research interests: • molecular basis of mood and anxiety disorders using genome-wide technologies • stress response and early adverse experience in human and cell models • mechanisms of gene x environment interactions in psychiatry• epigenetic mechanism relevant for psychiatric risk

Research interests: • CNS mechanisms of pain and pain modulation • the impact of expectation and learning on health outcomes and medical treatment • brain imaging • clinical translation * Photo copyright ©DGN

Research interests: • sleep and memory • regulation of food intake • memory during early development

Research interests: • active touch and object recognition • social and sexual touch • cortical organization • cellular basis of sensations and movement generation • hippocampal and parahippocampal activity linked to spatial navigation

Research interests: • neural mechanisms underlying pain, reward, fear and decision processes • high resolution fMRI techniques including spinal fMRI • parallel EEG-fMRI to combine high spatial with high temporal resolution • computational modelling to combine behavior with imaging/EEG

Research interests: • neural reinforcement learning • neuromodulation metacognition • computational psychiatry • representational learning

Research interests: • cognitive neuroscience of memory, navigation, perception, knowledge, learning & decision making • population coding in hippocampal formation; neural metric of cognitive spaces • structure-function mapping; brain oscillations • (high-field) fMRI, MEG, virtual reality, machine learning • translational neuroscience: Alzheimer’s disease; cognitive enhancement

Research interests: • dementias • memory • cognition • imaging •electrophysiology

Research interests: • social cognition/interaction, empathy, Theory of Mind, emotion and face processing • development and validation of tests and interventions for socio-emotional competencies and empathy • kinesthetic empathy and socio-emotional effects of synchronization • neuronal correlates of social cognition using functional and structural MRI • social interaction disorders (e.g. autism spectrum conditions, personality disorders, schizophrenia) • biological basis as well as diagnosis, intervention and integration of individuals with autism spectrum disorder • social robotics

Forschungsinteressen: • mapping the human brain in terms of areas and networks • application of machine-learning to neuroimaging data • modeling inter-individual variability in cognitive functions • clinical translation of imaging neuroscience

Research interests: • experimental law and economics • behavioral law and economics • legal theory • economic law

Research interests: • identification of candidate pathways for the pathophysiology of schizophrenia • brain plasticity across the psychosis spectrum • recovery trajectories in psychotic disorders • neurobiological, cognitive and clinical effects of aerobic exercise

Research interests: • identification of genes involved in speech, language and reading • functional analyses of language-related genes in cellular and animal models • brain imaging genomics • genetics of synaesthesia

Research interessts: • neurocognition of language processing and language acquisition • second language learning • modulation of language networks • structural brain basis of language

Research interests: • rhythmic neuronal synchronization and its cognitive functions • selective attention; stimulus-repetition based learning • in-vivo electrophysiology and optogenetics in awake primates • large-scale high-density electrophysiology with polyimide-based flexible probes • magnetoencephalography (MEG) and psychophysics in human subjecsts

Forschungsinteressen: • functional and structural foundations of brain asymmetries • executive functions in humans and other animals • evolution and organization of the vertebrate brain, incl. that of humans • fMRI of complex cognition in birds

Research interests: • evolution and development of the brain • study of fossil hominins, extant humans and non-human primates • micro-computed tomography, MRI, statistical shape analysis based on landmarks (geometric morphometrics)

Research interests: • cognitive and neural mechanisms of human voluntary action • sense of agency and response-outcome learning • neurophysiological mechanisms of conscious experience • somatosensory perception • sensorimotor basis of self-awareness

Research interests: • neurobiology of language • neuroimaging (fMRI, MEG, EEG, TMS) • computational modeling • memory/unification • virtual reality

Research interests: • cognition • language • plasticity • neurostimulation, neuroimaging • network interactions

Research interests: • human cognitive development • cross-cultural comparisons of human cognitive development • comparative great ape cognition

Research interests: • functional neuroimaging of visual and executive processes in humans • multivariate neuroimaging methods and brain reading • intentions, volition and free will • neurotechnology

Research interests: • decision neuroscience • cognitive and affective components in normal and disturbed social cognition • fMRI • NIRS • EEG • TMS

Research interests: • developmental psychobiology • neurobiology of depression & anxiety disorders • psychoneuroendocrinology of functional somatic syndromes • neural correlates of stress and emotion • interactions of stress and dispositional factors across development • models of bounded rationality

Reserch interests: • mechanisms of bounded rationality and in particular models of heuristics • mechanism of collective intelligence • mechanisms of learning, sampling and experienced-based decision making • boosting people’s decision making skills • how decision making and preferences change across the lifespan

Research interests: • general theory of complex systems • cognition and neurosciences • theoretical and mathematical biology • geometry, analysis and theoretical physics • dynamical systems and network analysis • economics and social sciences • philosophy, history of science, visual arts

Research interests: • adult hippocampal neurogenesis and its activity-dependent regulation • neurobiology of individuality • testing of neurogenesis-related functions in humans

Research interests: • embodied cognition and the neurophysiological basis of cognitive functions • multimodal integration and sensorimotor interactions

Research interests: • behavior-related neuronal signaling in cortical circuits • dendritic spine function and signal integration • neuronal dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease • high-resolution optical imaging in vitro and in vivo

Research interests: • behavioral and neural plasticity across the lifespan • brain-behavior relations across the lifespan • lifespan developmental theory • multivariate developmental methodology • formal models of behavioral change

Research interests: • individual differences in language skills • using language in conversation • relationship between language production and comprehension • computational models of speaking and listening

Research interests: • statistical learning theory for neural networks, support vector machines and ensemble learning techniques • deep learning • analysis of biomedical data: brain computer interfacing, genomic data analysis, computational chemistry and atomistic simulations

Research interests: • philosophy of mind • consciousness, self-consciousness and free will • ethical consequences of neuroscientific research

Research interests: • brain basis of speech perception and language comprehension • auditory cognition and music • multisensory perception • the temporal structure of perceptual experience • cognitive neuroscience and its foundations

Research interests: • computational social science • social and economic impact of • artificial Intelligence • human psychology and intelligent machines • new techniques for measuring and enabling human cooperation • human–machine cooperation • artificial intelligence ethics and governance

Research interests: • multisensory action control • neuroplasticity: functional and structural changes in the brain due to development, perceptual-cognitive training, physical exercising, traumatic events such as sensory deprivation • age dependence of the brain’s capacity to reorganize • behavioral and electrophysiological measures • fMRI • TMS

Research interests: • environmental effects on child language acquisition • individual and cross-linguistic variation in language acquisition • neuro-cognitive models of lexical and grammatical development • constraints and biases on the language acquisition mechanism • multi-ethodological approaches to child language acquisition

Research interests: Forschungsinteressen: • how sex hormones shape the human brain and cognition • sex-specific risk for neurodegenerative disease across the lifespan • interaction of metabolic risk and sex hormones for individual brain ageing trajectories and memory • neuroendocrine and inflammatory processes as vulnerability models for stress-related disease • methods: neuroreceptor-ligand PET imaging, structural and functional MRI, interventional studies, psychopharmacological challenge/depletion paradigms

Research interests: • animal communication • vocal learning in songbirds including multimodal aspects • evolution of human speech and music • behavioral, neurobiological and molecular methods

Research interests: • functional and structural ultra-high field MRI methods development • ultra-high field human and animal functional and structural imaging • combined optical (optogenetics, Ca, intrinsic optical) and MR acquisition

Research interests: • human information processing underlying perception, attention, and action • behavioral electroencephalographic and eye-movement measures

Research interests: • gene-environment interplay in musical engagement and expertise • the neural basis of skill learning and performance • neural mechanisms of creativity • neuropsychology of flow • cultural engagement, well-being and health

Research interests: • vascular risk factors leading to stroke and functional recovery • effect of brain lesions on brain architecture • brain plasticity after stroke • multimodal imaging

Research interests: • characterizing functional and anatomical microstructure of the human brain inc. in-vivo histology • developing methods for high-resolution anatomical and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) • biophysical modeling of MR contrast • MR image processing and analysis • validating MRI methods using advanced post-mortem histology (3D microscopy, PIXE)

Research interests: • image and video coding • data compression •signal processing • image processing • communications

Research interests: • animal models of fear and anxiety disorders • biological basis of stress-related psychopathology • role of the endocannabinoid system in fear, anxiety and cognition • cognitive performance in mouse models of psychiatric / neurological disorders • cognitive enhancement / extinction and erasure of traumatic memories

Research interests: • computational evolutionary methods • linguistic prehistory • animal cognition • philosophy of biology • evolution of human and animal behavior

Research interests: • visual attention • processing of rewards • behavioral neurology • memory • consciousness • fMRI

Research interests: • neural mechanisms of perception and object recognition • multimodal methodological approach • electrical stimulation and fMRI • neural event triggered fMRI for the study of inter-structure interactions

Research interests: • human evolution • the evolution of hominin cognition and stone tool analysis • relations between climate change and human adaptations

Research interests: • aesthetics of music (historical, transcultural and empirical perspectives) • music and meaning • understanding music • aesthetic experience in music