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 ERC funded study aims to characterize the grieving self and to investigate the potential of psychedelic treatments with the goal of supporting adaptative processing of the loss.
Research projects
Project 1
The Self After Interpersonal Loss
Project 2
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.
Rebecca Böhme. Photo credit THOR BALKHED
Project 3
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 Böhme (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.