Our Team

My PhD project investigates underlying mechanisms of depressive symptoms using computational models, (gamified) behavioral tasks, and fMRI to transdiagnostically examine behavioral and neural features of affective symptomatology. I further explore the potential role of sex hormones in the disproportionate prevalence of mood disorders in females. I am interested in integrating approaches from computational psychiatry, pharmacology and neuroendocrinology to study affective and stress-related disorders.

Everyone knows that dogs are enchanting; I believe their brains are just as wondrous! The lingering question that keeps me researching is: how did the neural mechanisms of the sparkling social cognition in dogs emerge? This scientific journey is a collaborative effort, where our dog participants, their families, and their trainers are at the core; they make the scanner shimmer. Then, together with my colleagues, we conduct dog-human comparative analyses to understand how environmental pressures shape brain specializations. My hope is that our findings light dogs up as emotionally complex beings and inspire efforts to improve their welfare around the world.

Email: laura.veronica.cuaya.retana(at)univie.ac.at
 

My research focuses on how adults and children learn to collaborate and the evolutionary and psychological factors that drive human motivation for cooperation. I investigate these questions in diverse populations, including adults, children, and clinical groups, using realistic cooperation settings to measure humans' behavior and decisions in achieving common goals. A key focus of my research is understanding how insights into human cooperative abilities can be applied to promote pro-environmental cooperation.

My PhD research explores how environmental conditions, particularly heat, influence human cognition, well-being, and decision-making. Across my studies, I investigate how both real-world heat exposure and acute heat stress affect cognitive performance and behavior, including how people learn to make decisions that benefit themselves, others, and the environment. To address these questions, I use a multi-method approach combining online field studies, controlled laboratory experiments, computational modeling, and fMRI. My research brings together environmental psychology and social neuroscience to better understand the complex relationships between environmental conditions, cognitive processes, and human behavior.

Email: moana.druee(at)univie.ac.at

In my research I set out to understand and model how we can leverage our prior experiences to inform our everyday decisions in novel situations. In this line of research, I combine the modelling skills, experimental methodologies and insights from the fields of behavioral economics, cognitive psychology and memory-neuroscience.

Email: achiel.fenneman(at)univie.ac.at

My PhD project, part of the FWF Cluster of Excellence Neuronal Circuits in Health and Disease, investigates the human amygdala beyond its traditional role as the brain’s fear center. The amygdala is a heterogeneous structure whose subnuclei have distinct functional and connectivity profiles shaped by GABAergic microcircuits, contributing to emotion, social learning, and decision-making. Their small size and subcortical location make human studies challenging, and translating rodent findings is limited by a lack of comparable paradigms. To address this, I work on developing optimized fMRI paradigms spanning social and affective domains, together with behavioral tasks. By integrating behavioral data with task-evoked activity and functional connectivity, my work aims to clarify the amygdala’s role in cognition and emotion. It also aims to support computational, clinical, and translational research across species.

Email: alexandra.heinz(at)univie.ac.at

I am a neuroscientist with an interest in the evolution of social cognition, particularly in how dogs process emotions compared to humans using fMRI. Currently, my main research focus is investigating the social brain networks in dogs by using representational similarity analysis and machine learning to contrast the neural representations of the social world between dogs and humans. I'm fascinated by the unique abilities of dogs, the way they interact with us, and their capacity to form significant bonds with a different species. My goal is to connect dog and human social brain functions using comparative neuroimaging to deepen our understanding of the dog brain, uncover its similarities and differences with the human brain, and contribute valuable insights into the evolution of brain networks specialized in social cognition.

Email: raul.hernandez.perez(at)univie.ac.at 

For my PhD project, I am investigating gut–brain axis signaling in humans, focusing on how the gut microbiome and its metabolites relate to brain function, acute stress, and neural plasticity. I am interested in how the gut microbiome and brain communicate and how this communication might be modulated. To investigate these connections, I combine microbiome analyses with behavioral and hormonal measures, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In addition, I contribute to method development by establishing and evaluating a magnetic resonance spectroscopy protocol on our MRI scanner.

Email: thomas.karner(at)univie.ac.at

I am a mathematical psychologist and statistician investigating the use of cognitive models in social neuroscience. I am particularly interested in Bayesian statistics, the development of software tools, and the philosophy of statistical inference. Next to my methodological research, I assist the members of the SCAN Unit in all things statistics and data science.

Email: lukas.lengersdorff(at)univie.ac.at

My research aims to understand the role of empathy in politics. I’m interested in how we develop our empathy beliefs and how they influence our everyday political behaviors and ideology, especially among young adults and adolescents. I will use panel surveys, behavioral experiments, and eye-tracking.

My research is part of the MSCA IP-PAD project funded by Horizon Europe.

Email: yufang.liao(at)univie.ac.at 

My PhD research examines the psychological and cognitive barriers that prevent individuals from reducing unsustainable behaviors, as well as potential strategies to overcome them. Although many people express support for climate change mitigation, far fewer are willing to alter their own unsustainable habits or endorse sustainability policies that directly affect them. To better understand this gap between attitudes and actions, I investigate how factors such as the experience of loss, psychological inertia, limited cognitive control, and reduced empathy for future generations or the environment contribute to it. My approach integrates methods ranging from fMRI to neuroeconomics and decision-making research.

Email: lukas.mayrhofer(at)univie.ac.at

My research interests focus on understanding how bodily changes influence decision-making through hormones, neurotransmitters, brain activity, and representations. During my PhD, I am currently investigating how acute heat stress, which leads to an increase in body temperature, affects individuals’ social behavior. Additionally, I am interested in the phenomenon of stress contagion, specifically how stress-related information is transmitted from one person to another.

Email: nieh97(at)univie.ac.at

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I am interested in the effects of stress on our ability to connect with, and understand others. To this end, I study how stress--its related psychological and biological markers--impact our ability to understand others' emotions and intentions, and the way we process social and non-social information. I am also interested in how stress affects our social togetherness, and vice versa.

I am funded by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and by The Austrian Science Fund.

Email: jonas.nitschke(at)univie.ac.at 

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My main line of research focuses on promoting Open Science and Big Team Science. I work to improve transparency and reproducibility in psychology and participate in large-scale collaborative projects to tackle questions that single labs cannot address alone. I am involved in international networks such as the Psychological Science Accelerator, working on topics ranging from social cognition to mental health. I am particularly interested in developing models for implementing Big Team Science in clinical psychology, where ethical, logistical, and funding challenges are significant yet solutions remain underexplored.

My second line of research focuses on self-other distinction and how it is impaired in psychopathology. I use a multi-method approach (including MRI, EMA, and behavioral experiments) to examine different social situations involving the self and others. 

My research is funded by The Austrian Science Fund www.fwf.ac.at/en/.

Email: ekaterina.pronizius(at)univie.ac.at 

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My research focuses on developing and validating neuroimaging methods to study neurotransmission in humans, with a particular emphasis on non-invasive, in vivo GABA quantification using magnetic resonance spectroscopy in the amygdala and connected circuits. In collaboration with colleagues across the SCAN-Unit and the cluster of excellence for neuronal circuits in health and disease, I work to improve data acquisition (MRI/fMRI and spectroscopy protocols) and to build robust processing and analysis pipelines that produce measurements that are reliable, transparent, and reproducible across projects. Another part of my project focuses on implementing advanced functional connectivity approaches to relate neurochemical markers to network-level organization and behavior. Overall, I aim to develop cutting-edge methods and make them practical and accessible for cognitive and social neuroscience, contributing to an interdisciplinary effort to understand how inhibitory signaling shapes social and affective processes in humans.

My research is part of the Neuroscience cluster of excellence.

Email: tobias.reimann(at)univie.ac.at

I am interested in the computational and neurochemical processes that shape our everyday social behaviour. Specifically, I conduct computational modelling to investigate how humans utilise uncertainties in their prior knowledge and perceptions, to draw maximally optimal conclusions in social settings (a hypothetical process called precision-weighting). Moreover, I use psychopharmacological approaches to better understand how certain neurotransmitters (e.g., dopamine) modulate these social precision-weighting processes in healthy individuals, with the aim of informing theories of social dysfunction in disorders such as Parkinson’s. In addition, I am also currently investigating how motor function and cultural differences affect social cognition.

Email: bianca.schuster(at)univie.ac.at

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My research focusses on the amygdala and emotion processing in the human brain. In addition, I am always working on new neuroimaging, data processing, and modeling methods. One of these new methods is real-time functional MRI, where people can learn to regulate their own brain states while they are inside the MR scanner. This method is not only a promising therapeutical tool, it will also allow for completely new ways of discovering how our brains work.

Email: ronald.sladky(at)univie.ac.at

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In my PhD research, I investigate the computational and neural basis of how uncertainty shapes prosocial and pro-environmental behavior. To this end, I am particularly interested in how people engage with information when facing uncertain opportunities to help others and the environment, and how this influences their willingness to act. Using diverse methods such as effort-based decision-making tasks combined with computational modeling and neuroimaging methods, I aim to uncover the mechanisms that drive motivated, prosocial, and sustainable decision-making.

My research is funded by The Austrian Science Fund (FWF).

Email: meghna.srivastava(at)univie.ac.at

My main line of research focuses on environmental neuroscience. My work explores how different environments affect human health and well-being, with a particular focus on their potential to influence aversive experiences such as pain and stress. I combine different methodological approaches, including neuroimaging (e.g., fMRI), psychophysiology (e.g., ECG, cortisol), research synthesis (e.g., meta-analysis) and big team science. Given the close relationship between environments and human well-being, I'm also interested in how climate change may alter these interactions and what we can do to mitigate its impact and adapt to changing environmental conditions.

Email: maximilian.steininger(at)univie.ac.at 
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With my PhD project I investigate how people make pro-environmental decisions, which are the factors that drive or hinder them, and which brain mechanisms underlie this type of decision-making. By combining functional magnetic resonance imaging, computational modeling and large-scale international survey approach I aim to advance our understanding of these processes.

Email: boryana.todorova(at)univie.ac.at

Google Scholar profile