Research
Systems Neuroscience of Psychosis (SyNoPsis) is a research project to investigate structural and functional correlates of sensori-motor brain systems involved in psychotic behavior and experience.
Language Domain
Hallucinations, Formal Thought Disorder & the Language System
Affect Domain
Emotions, Delusions & the Limbic System
Motor Function Domain
Motor Function, Non-Verbal Communication & the Motor System
The spectrum from Health to Psychosis
According to previous work in the course of the Systems Neuroscience of Psychosis (SyNoPsis) project, psychotic symptoms represent disturbances in higher-order brain functions in the domains of language, emotion and motor function. They can be grouped with regard to underlying dysfunctions of three distinct, anatomically and functionally segregated brain circuitries, namely the brain’s language, limbic and motor systems with their cortico-basal and cortico-cortical circuitries. In this research group, we extend the SyNoPsis framework to the healthy population, investigating the interaction of behavioral functions in these three domains and their respective underlying brain circuitries. Therewith, we aim at providing further evidence for the validity of the continuum hypothesis of psychopathology for psychotic disorders. These findings will be important to identify disease mechanisms underlying distinct subtypes of psychosis and may stimulate future research on novel diagnostic classification approaches as well as on symptom-specific treatment.
