PD Dr. Peter Brugger

 

Main Goals, Keywords

Links between behavioral neurology, neuropsychiatry and cognitive psychology with special interests in the borderlines between highly adaptive and maladaptive behavior and thought.
Addictions; Language: development and right hemisphere participation; Randomness in behavior and thought; Representation of body and space.

Group Members

1 professor, 2 senior research fellows, 1 postdoctoral fellow, 4 PhD students, 1 speech pathologist, 1 occupational therapist, 1 technician.

Previous and Current Research

In healthy subjects, we explore the neuropsychological underpinnings of emotion regulation and impulse control, of belief systems and perceptual-cognitive phenomena bordering to hallucinations and delusions.
Clinical research focuses on cortical reorganization processes after peripheral and spinal deefferentation/deafferentation syndromes and in persons born with various limb deficiencies. We are interested in disentangling frames of reference in the representation of space after parietal lobe lesions and in the relationships between the representations of time and space.

Future Projects

Brain plasticity and the neuropsychology of synaesthesia; Prenatal development of speech sound perception; Distortions of numerical space after brain damage; Neuropharmacology of belief formation; Mapping of specific language-associated functions.

Techniques and Equipment

Techniques: Mainly sensory stimulation experiments (visual, tactile, auditory modalities).
Equipment: Paper, pencil, tachistoscopes. Access to various neuroimaging techniques via collaborations.

Selected Publications

(complete list:http://www.neurologie.usz.ch/german/LehreUndForschung/Neuropsychologie/default.htm)

• Mohr C, Bracha HS, Brugger P (2003) Magical ideation modulates spatial behavior. Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 15, 168-174
• Regard M, Knoch D, Gütling E, Landis T (2003) Brain damage and addictive behavior: a neuropsychological and electroencephalogram investigation with pathological gamblers. Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, 16, 54-67
• Brugger P, Kollias SS, Müri R, Crelier G, Hepp-Reymond M-C, Regard M (2000) Beyond re-membering: phantom sensations of congenitally absent limbs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 97, 6167-6172
• Tettamanti M, Alkadhi H, Moro A, Perani D, Kollias S, Weniger D (2002) Neural correlates for the acquisition of natural language syntax. NeuroImage, 17, 700-709

Selected Lectures, Seminars, Colloquia

KLINEX - Kolloquium für klinische und experimentelle Neuropsychologie; Verhaltensneurologisches Kolloquium (WS); Aktuelle Probleme der Neurologie, Neurochirurgie und Hirnforschung; Neurorama.

Funding

Swiss National Science Foundation