PD Dr. phil. Matthias Grieder

I am interested in the neuronal mechanisms of memory and the neuropathology of memory impairments. I see this field as crucial for the understanding of several psychiatric diseases such as dementia, schizophrenia, and depression, as well as for their treatment. In the case of dementia, no effective treatment has been discovered so far, the need to improve the understanding of the course of neurodegeneration in relation to the symptomatology is eminent. To this end, I investigated semantic memory processing in healthy aging and in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and semantic dementia. Moreover, I have been working on studies that focus on structural and functional connectivity of memory brain networks in these patient groups. More recently, I have been investigating the role of sleep architecture and memory consolidation, because, memory impairments often accompany the main symptoms of psychiatric patients. Thus, it is probable that memory disturbance is related to abnormal sleep that is frequently reported by patients. This is supported by evidence showing that deep sleep is relevant for the process that stores the daily experiences into long-term memory. Consequently, I aim at improving sleep dependent memory consolidation with the use of the non-invasive transcranial direct current stimulation, by enhancing the specific brain activity, which is related to memory performance. Finally, another current research focus lies on the identification of brain networks for anxiety memory, which are related to psychosis and chronic anxiety.