Losing someone can feel like losing a part of oneself. Do we need others to be ourselves? What happens to the self when we lose a loved one? How can people be adequately supported in times of grief? This 糖心直播 funded study aims to characterize the grieving self and to investigate the potential of psychedelic treatments with the goal of supporting adaptive processing of the loss.
Research projects
The Self After Interpersonal Loss
Self-other-distinction in psychiatry
Is the sense of self altered in psychiatric conditions? With a focus on somatosensation and interoception, we study the sense of self and self-other-distinction in different psychiatric conditions and in neurodiverse populations, for example in schizophrenia, ADHD, anorexia, and autism.
Self-other-distinction in the spinal cord
What are the mechanisms behind the distinction between self- and other? How do top-down and bottom-up pathways interact to facilitate distinct processing of self- and other-generated sensations? Does this distinction already occur in the spinal cord through integration of peripheral and cortical signals? To answer these questions, we utilize an innovative neuroimaging technique, which combines functional imaging of the cortex and of the spinal cord.
Rebecca B枚hme (center), Adam Enmalm (left) and Reinoud Kaldewaij (right) are running a functional imaging scan of a person's brain and spinal cord simultaneously at CMIV, Campus US.
International Collaborations
Our lab is involved in several international collaborations aimed at understanding the social, emotional, and bodily foundations of mental health and well-being across the lifespan.
One major ongoing project is SWITCH, a large European collaboration investigating social-emotional well-being during the transition from preschool to school. Combining longitudinal assessments with hyperscanning functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), the project examines how interpersonal synchrony between children, parents, and peers contributes to social development, mental health, and successful adaptation to school.
We also participate in TouchNet, a multinational ecological momentary assessment (EMA) project examining how social touch occurs in everyday life and how it relates to stress, loneliness, social connectedness, and well-being across different cultural and individual contexts.
Beyond these core projects, we collaborate with researchers across Europe and beyond on a broad range of topics, including psychedelic therapies, autism spectrum conditions, eating disorders and body image disturbances, ADHD, social cognition, self-processing, interpersonal synchrony, affective touch, pain modulation, and touch-pain interactions. Through these collaborations, we combine experimental, clinical, neuroimaging, psychophysiological, and real-world assessment approaches to better understand the mechanisms that shape mental health and human social functioning.