International Graduate School of Neuroscience

We focus on the early course of psychiatric diseases as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Hereby, we administer methods as neuroimaging (structural and functional MRI, MR spectroscopy), electrophysiology (evoked potentials, EEG), genetics (polymorphisms and haplotypes of serotonergic and dopaminergic system) and neuropsychology (frontal lobe functions).

Our goal is to characterize such prodromal patients clinically and neurobiologically to recognize and to treat them earlier as well as to come closer into the pathophysiology of these diseases without the influence of any psychotropic medication. Thus, this approach is accompanied by working with animal developmental models of psychiatric diseases (pre- or postnatal intervention and assessment in adulthood) to follow neurobiological changes more invasively. Furthermore, we are engaged in studies using the methods above mentioned in the following disorders: Obsessive-compulsive disorders, suicidality, anxiety disorder, ADHD, dementia and psychiatric syndromes of neurological and somatic diseases as stroke, M. Parkinson, M. Huntington, tinnitus and diabetics.