Miriam Klein-Flügge

I am a neuroscientist interested in motivation and decision-making and a senior research associate, tutor and University Research Lecturer at Oxford University. My work aims to understand how the human brain enables us to flexibly adjust our decisions to complex internal and external circumstances. For example, when decisions require physical effort (motivation), sequences of actions, or taking into account changes of context. In my PhD, I studied the mechanisms by which decision signals reach motor regions to enable implementation of the resulting actions. I use brain imaging (fMRI, MEG) as well as causal stimulation techniques (TMS, tDCS, ultrasound) to study these processes.

More recently, I have embarked on two new research themes: I have begun to examine the structure and function of subcortical regions located deep within the brain to help us understand their contribution to flexible decision-making. And I have started to study how decision computations are altered by mental illness because we do not currently understand which brain systems support changes in motivation and decision-making in these patients or precisely which aspects of decision-making are changed.