Psychosis and Neurodevelopment

In our imaging studies on psychosis and neurodevelopmental disorders we aim to increase our understanding of the underlying neurobiology and associated genetic and environmental factors. To achieve this we have been making use of several state of the art imaging techniques including (3T/7T) structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging(MRI), resting state MRI, MR Spectroscopy, functional MRI, Electro Encephalo Graphy, Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT), including combinations with behavioural tasks and pharmacological challenges. 

Unique contributions and highlights

We are involved in and contributing to large-scale international imaging consortia including ENIGMA Clinical High Risk and Psyscan aiming to acquire new insights into functional and structural alterations underlying psychotic symptoms. 

More recently, we have started to investigate complex interactions between genetic variation and brain morphometry in large-scale datasets (e.g. GENUS, ENIGMA, GROUP). Our work in the domain of neurochemical imaging (PET/SPECT), and pharmacological fMRI, focuses on dopaminergic and noradrenergic contributions to working memory, motivation, reward processing, and stress-sensitivity.