Molecular alterations manifest in variations of cortical thickness and other measures of atrophy in areas,
that subserve crucial functions involved in affective psychiatric diseases.
Such areas can be defined by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), either under certain experimental tasks conditions or under rest.
Resting state fMRI acquisition and analysis is performed and allows due to its high potential as a standard clinical diagnosic mean promising evidence for example regarding discrimination of both healthy subjects and patients as well as subtypes of diseases by application of pattern recognition algorithms.
Conclusions about network activity of the brain can be either drawn from seed-based approches like functional connectivity (FC), amplitudes of low-frequency fluctuations (Alff), regional homogeniety (ReHo) and graphtheory, or data-driven approaches like Independent Component Analysis (ICA).
On the anatomical level, structural connectivity between relevant brain regions is further investigated.
using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).
To get a better understanding of potentially dysbalanced metabolites or transmitters in the brain,
we use magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to assess regions that exhibit either anatomical or functional deficits.
This allows not only to develop future biomarkers predicting subsequent disease progress on the basis of subtle biochemical changes, but it may also lead toward therapeutical interventions that can be attuned to a specific molecular deficit under certain psychopathological conditions.


Furthermore, we investigate changes in behaviour and emotionality that originate from affective disorders,
such as empathy, attachment, arousal, and salience processing using task-based fMRI paradigms.
We scrutinize methods of MR data preprocessing, because they provide the foundation for valid inferences on a multi-subject level.