Foto Credit to Phil Dera

How to describe the concept of the self from a neuroscientific perspective? Is there even “a self” without the other? My research consists in the interdisciplinary investigation of the self on multiple levels of analysis ranging from self-regulatory processes in the autonomous and central nervous system to social interaction in cooperation behavior modelled through game theory. A special focus lies on the assessment of socio-emotional processes in self and other (DFG GRK 2386 Extrospection) with the ultimate goal to model a neural taxonomy of the self. I extended my research to the clinical domain to study disturbances of selfhood in patients suffering from schizophrenia by applying methods from computational psychiatry in a transdisciplinary account of the active self (DFG SPP 2134 Active Self). A methodological strength of my research concerns large-sample-size modelling of inter- and intra-individual differences in brain-behavior relationships.

I am a Principal Investigator and Lecturer at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and affiliated with the Institute of Psychology of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Methods: ECG, EEG, fMRI, GSR, Structural equation modeling (SEM)

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Without the generous support of my funding agencies, among them Einstein Stiftung Berlin, German Research Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service as well as Studienstiftung, my work would not have been possible.

I am a member of the Ethics Board of the Institute of Psychology, Equal Opportunity representative within the METIS Program of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and a #ZIA ZEIT Fellow promoting visibility of Women in Science, Germany. Moreover I took part in the Executive Women in Leadership Program by the Yale School of Management of Yale University, CT, USA. I studied Psychology, Communication Studies and Political Science at the Humboldt-Universität and Freie Universität in Berlin and the University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.