About me and my research

My current research focuses on how motivational factors and the fact that we receive rewards or punishment can impact our behaviour and how we can learn to overcome certain behavioural patterns by exerting cognitive control. I am trying to understand what cognitive and neural processes are driving these mechanisms by applying computational models to behavioural and neural data.

As a  clinical neuroscientist and trained psychotherapist in cognitive behavioral therapy, I'm particularly interested in how these processes could be altered in patient populations such as OCD and ADHD patients. However, given the recent debate on how our traditional clinical diagnosis do not map well unto neurobiological entities and processes, I am also approaching my research questions from a dimensional perspective by examining large samples from the general population. Here, I'm interested in the entire spectrum of compulsive and impulsive features and how those might be related to abnormalities in learning and decision making processes.

As such, my research is clearly anchored in the newly emerging field of Computational Psychiatry.

If you want to stay updated on what I'm doing and what I'm currently interested in, please also follow me on twitter @VanessaSch0lz