Department for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute for Mental Health, Mannheim and Ruprecht-Karls University Heidelberg
Medical Director of the Clinic for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and Deputy Director of the Central Institute of Mental Health.
Projects
Focus on the investigation of a lack of cognitive control in bullies and victims that contributes to the risk of developing mental health problems. Therefore, the project will assess bullies and their victims in real-life and digital social interactions to investigate how aberrant cognitive and affective prefrontal control and sensitivity to peer rejection with accompanied alterations in autonomic arousal may increase externalizing and internalizing behavior.
The central recruitment platform for collecting and curating a longitudinal dataset for studying individual aggression dynamics related to the neural, cognitive-emotional, neurobiological, psychopathological and environmental factors in patient groups.
Bundle all training and mentoring activities in a research training group (RTG) for the young researchers participating in this collaborative research center.
Publications
Neurodevelopmental conditions, such as autism, are highly heterogeneous at both the mechanistic and phenotypic levels. Therefore, parsing heterogeneity is vital for uncovering underlying processes that could inform the development of targeted, personalized support.
Early life stress is associated with alterations in brain function and connectivity during affective processing, especially in the fronto-limbic pathway. However, most of the previous studies were limited to a small set of priori-selected regions and did not address the impact of stress timing on functional connectivity.
Sites
Heidelberg University is Germany’s oldest university, founded in 1386. Renowned for its research excellence and strong emphasis on the humanities, natural sciences, and medicine, it consistently ranks among Europe’s top universities.
The Central Institute of Mental Health (Zentralinstitut für Seelische Gesundheit) in Mannheim, Germany, is a leading psychiatric research institution affiliated with Heidelberg University. It specializes in research, treatment, and education related to mental health disorders, neuroscience, and psychosocial factors influencing mental well-being.
