Michael Koslowski

Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin | Charité · Department of Psychiatry

Dreams are still an enigma of human cognition, studied extensively in psychoanalysis and neuroscience. According to the Freudian dream theory and Solms' modifications of the unconscious derived from it, the fundamental task of meeting our emotional needs is guided by the principle of homeostasis. Our innate value system generates conscious feelings...

This study described cannabis use behavior among college students in Berlin, in particular, differences in use motives between subjects with frequent use and those with signs of cannabis use disorder (CUD). Cross-sectional data were collected via an online survey among Berlin college students ( N=9350; 50.7% women; Mage=24.4). Motivation scales wer...

Purpose of Review The use of psychedelics in a therapeutical setting has been reported for the treatment of various diagnoses in recent years. However, as psychedelic substances are still commonly known for their (illicit) recreational use, it may seem counterintuitive to use psychedelic therapy to treat substance use disorders. This review aims to...

Psychedelics such as psilocybin have recently gained remarkable interest in both the specialist literature and the lay press because studies suggest that these substances may have great therapeutic potential in various psychiatric disorders, including major depression. However, clinical trials with psychedelic drugs pose particular methodological c...

Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts galten Psychedelika als zukünftiger Trend in der Psychotherapie. Jedoch wurde die klinische Erforschung durch gesellschaftlich motivierte Verbote lange blockiert und erst in den 1990er-Jahren wieder aufgenommen. Aktuelle Studien zeigen ein starkes Interesse an der Weiterentwicklung der Therapie mit Psychedelika. Ihr poten...

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is one of the most effective treatments in cases of severe and treatment resistant major depression. 60-80% of patients respond to ECT, but the procedure is demanding and robust prediction of ECT responses would be of great clinical value. Predictions based on neuroimaging data have recently come into focus, but stil...

The efficacy of psychedelic-assisted therapies for mental disorders has been attributed to the lasting change from experiential avoidance to acceptance that these treatments appear to facilitate. This article presents a conceptual model that specifies potential psychological mechanisms underlying such change, and that shows substantial parallels be...

Early dysfunction of the brain reward system in schizophrenia might be already recognized in the prodromal phase of this illness. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the blood oxygen level-dependent response in the ventral striatum (VS) of subjects with ultra-high risk for psychosis during the presentation of reward-indicating a...

Chorea is recognized as one of the neurologic manifestations of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Most reports show an association between chorea and antiphospholipid (aPL) antibodies in SLE patients. The objective of this study was to describe the association of aPL antibodies with lupus chorea and its possible role in the pathogenesis of chorea...

Although structural changes of the basal ganglia are widely implicated in schizophrenia, prior findings in chronically medicated patients show that these changes relate to particular antipsychotic treatments. In unmedicated schizophrenia, local alterations in morphological parameters and their relationships with clinical measures remain unknown. No...

Dysfunctional activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during working memory (WM) in schizophrenia patients has repeatedly been observed, however little is known about specific medication effects on the modulation of DLPFC activation. We measured activation of DLPFC during a WM task in a longitudinal fMRI study in ten schizophrenia...

High blockade of dopamine D2 receptors in the ventral striatum including the nucleus accumbens may interfere with reward anticipation and cause secondary negative symptoms such as apathy or anhedonia. This may not be the case with newer neuroleptics such as olanzapine, which show less dopamine D2 receptor blockade and a faster off-rate from the rec...

Activation during anticipation of monetary loss compared to the neutral condition in the healthy controls at two time points (T1 and T2) and in schizophrenic patients while treated with typical neuroleptics and after switching to olanzapine. Displayed are the corrected p values, the cluster size, the t values, uncorrected p values, and coordinates...

Clinical studies in patients with schizophrenia suggest that atypical neuroleptics are more effective than typical neuroleptics in reducing negative symptoms including apathy and anhedonia. Dysfunction of the dopaminergic reward system may contribute to negative symptoms in schizophrenia. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the...

Negative symptoms may be associated with dysfunction of the brain reward system in schizophrenia. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess the BOLD response in the ventral striatum of unmedicated schizophrenics during presentation of reward-indicating and loss-indicating stimuli. A total of 10 schizophrenic men (7 never medica...

Atypical neuroleptics, unlike typical neuroleptics, lead to less severe blockage of the dopaminergic neurotransmission in the ventral striatum, the most important structure of the so-called mesolimbic dopaminergic reward system. The functional effects of this on motivation and drive have not been investigated up to now. Using functional magnetic re...