Principal Investigator

Miriam’s work focuses on human motivation, decision and learning processes. She is particularly interested in how subcortical and cortical regions of the brain interact. A lot of her time is currently spent setting up studies using transcranial ultrasonic stimulation (TUS) which allows studying the causal contribution of deep brain regions non-invasively for the first time. Miriam is also interested in understanding behavioural and brain changes underlying mood disorders and in exploring the clinical potential of TUS.

Postdoc

Lilian tries to understand how we detect and adapt to changes in our internal and external circumstances, especially when they happen on different timescales. To study this, she uses probabilistic models of behaviour, M/EEG, pharmacology and TUS. Her current work focuses on how people process perceptual, emotional, and interoceptive information and how this changes when they are under the influence of ketamine, a drug which affects both perception and mood.

Postdoc

Johannes is interested in how humans make so called "foraging" decisions in which they decide whether to stay and persist with a choice option they currently have or wheher to leave and explore whether there might be better alternative options available. He uses large-scale online testing, computational modelling of behaviour, fMRI recordings, and will use transcranial ultrasonic stimulation (TUS) in the future.

Postdoc

Maja’s work involves using transcranial ultrasound neurostimulation together with neuroimaging and analyses of behaviour to study how we choose to approach or avoid situations, as well as how confident we feel about the decisions we make. She is particularly interested in linking these decision-making processes with the mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders.

Postdoc

Rong is interested in motivation and effort processes. Her current work focuses on how the human brain supports effort learning in a changing environment. To achieve this, she employs 7T fMRI to determine which subcortical regions reflect the effort processes, and then uses transcranial ultrasonic stimulation (TUS) to examine the causal contribution of these deep regions.

D.Phil. Student

Sankalp studies how friendships start and what our social behaviour can tell us about our well-being. He uses tools of neuroimaging and computational psychiatry to study how context affects our propensity to connect socially. He is co-supervised by Prof. Matthew Rushworth.

D.Phil. Student

It has been well established that humans are capable of repurposing learned knowledge to facilitate novel applications, i.e. generalization of learned knowledge. Zilu's DPhil project aims to study the theory of compositional generalization and how to better facilitate learning and generalization in humans. She intends to use neural networks as computational models combined with neural imaging techniques to provide a mechanistic account of compositional generalization.

D.Phil. student

Bolu is a Nigerian medical doctor, Rhodes Scholar and DPhil student in the department of Psychiatry. Her research focuses on the impact of adversity on decision-making and mental health in adolescence.

D.Phil. student

Miruna is interested in how people adapt their decisions in different social-emotional contexts. She uses transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS), brain imaging techniques (fMRI, EEG) and pharmacological interventions to investigate the neural mechanisms of flexible emotional decision making.

D.Phil. Student

Tim is interested in how non-invasive brain stimulation technologies can map the relationship between brain phenomena and psychological states as well as how these technologies can be used to potentially ameliorate psychiatric symptoms. He explores mainly the effects of the novel non-invasive brain stimulation technology, transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS), on both neuroimaging (i.e. fMRI) as well as behavioural measures.

NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow in Psychiatry

James’s research interests are in improving our understanding of the neural basis of mood disorders and the link between neural circuitry, cognitive function and emotional processing to explain and therapeutically alter mental health symptoms and improve brain health. James completed his undergraduate studies in Neuroscience and Clinical Medicine at University College London. He undertook a Master of Science by research in Psychiatry under the supervision of Professor Andrea Cipriani and Professor Paul Harrison, as well as a Master of Business Administration, at the University of Oxford.

PhD student

Eleonora is a PhD student at the University of Plymouth, co-supervised by Elsa Fouragnan (Brain Stimulation Lab - BRIC - University of Plymouth) and Miriam Klein-Flügge. She is interested in the role of deep brain regions in flexible decision making and reinforcement learning. She uses imaging techniques (fMRI), transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS), and computational modelling to causally investigate the relationship between neural circuitry and cognitive function, and contribute to the development of clinical applications of TUS in psychiatric disorders.

Research Assistant

Naomi supports the research undertaken in both Miriam Klein-Flügge’s and Matthew Rushworth’s (Decision and Action) labs. Using non-invasive brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) and transcranial magnetic stimulation  (TMS), the research aims to understand how modulating specific brain regions leads to changes in behaviour. More specifically, Naomi is interested in motivation, the neural mechanisms underlying it, and how it may differ in people with various psychiatric conditions.