ABOUT ME
Fascinated by “La Condition humaine” in all its complexities and within all its various environments, I am interested in understanding decision processes by using computational modeling and by incorporating the findings of neuroscience, psychology and behavioral/experimental economics.
In doing so, I attempt to unravel the interaction of the underlying cognitive, motivational and neural mechanisms that shape an individual’s thought, perception and behavior.
Currently, I am interested in understanding the underlying neurocognitive decision processes of individuals with mental specialities (Computational Psychiatry)
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Computational Psychiatry
The nascent field of “computational psychiatry” attempts to understand the mechanistic and specific differences between different disorders.
I attempt to create a neuropsychological diagnostic tool that not only accounts for the different ADHD subtypes, but that also accounts for comorbidities and acknowledges for different ADHD phenotypes and for how ADHD evolves with age. This is important as not only the number of children, but also the number of adults diagnosed with ADHD is steadily increasing.
EDUCATION
2019 - present
The Ohio State University
PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience
2017 - 2019
The Ohio State University
Master of Arts in Psychology with Specialization: Neuroscience
Body - Mind Interactions
How different physiological states potentially modulate hormonal and brain neurotransmitter dynamics and in doing so influence humans’ information processing and social decisions.
In this vein, we are currently:
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exploring the use of cholesterol supplementation for treating symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children.
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creating different artificial neural networks that represent distinct deficits in ASD to understand better the different ASD phenotypes.
2015 - 2017
University of Zurich
Master of Arts in Economics with a Minor in Behavioral and Experimental Economics
2014 - 2015
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH)
Additional coursework in Mathematics (Real Calculus and Linear Algebra)
2012 - 2014
University of Zurich
Bachelor of Arts in Economics
2008 - 2012
Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW)
Bachelor of Science in Business Administration
2016 - 2017
University of Zurich
Additional coursework in Biological Psychology
Beliefs
How individuals form their set of beliefs, based on their experiences and observations. How they rely on them when processing multiple alternatives and choosing an optimal course of action and eventually, how persistent they are such that one finds epigenetic evidence for it.
Aging and Executive Control Processes
Previous research suggests that executive control processes degrade with age due to a neural loss in frontal connectivity. However, the cognitive concept of "executive control processes" remain vaguely described and research examining experimentally aging effects remain inconclusive. We are offering a novel task switching paradigm to decompose various components of these control processes with the Ratcliff Diffusion Model (RDM) and we are examining the effects of aging.