Miriam Klein-Flügge

I am a neuroscientist interested in how the human brain enables us to perform the complex types of decisions we face in daily life, e.g. when desired outcomes are only obtained after delay, physical labour, and sequences of actions. I also study 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) to study these processes in the healthy human brain. Most recently, I have begun to examine how the precise aspects of these computations are affected by changes in mental well-being. Mental health disorders such as depression involve abnormal decision-making, and this is something I would like to understand better from a behavioural and a neural point of view. Some or my recent work has examined regions of the brain that show abnormal metabolism in depression, in particular the amygdala.