
Mihai AvramUniversity of Lübeck · Klinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie
Mihai Avram
PD Dr. rer. biol. hum.
About
63
Publications
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Introduction
I am a senior researcher working in the Translational Psychiatry group at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the University of Lübeck. My research focuses on the effects of psychedelics on human brain function and the potential utility of LSD for the treatment of mental disorders. Additionally, I am interested in the neural and molecular basis of distinct symptoms of psychotic disorders.
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
January 2021 - present
June 2014 - December 2020
March 2011 - October 2014
Publications
Publications (63)
Psychedelics have recently attracted significant attention for their potential to mitigate symptoms associated with various psychiatric disorders. However, the precise neurobiological mechanisms responsible for these effects remain incompletely understood. A valuable approach to gaining insights into the specific mechanisms of action involves compa...
Background:
While the exploration of serotonergic psychedelics as psychiatric medicines deepens, so does the pressure to better understand how these compounds act on the brain.
Methods:
We used a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design and administered lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), and d-a...
Background
Patients with psychotic disorders present alterations in thalamocortical intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) as measured by resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). Specifically, thalamic iFC is increased with sensorimotor cortices (hyperconnectivity) and decreased with prefrontal-limbic cortices (hypoconnectivi...
Psychiatry has a well-established tradition of comparing drug-induced experiences to psychotic symptoms, based on shared phenomena such as altered perceptions. The present review focuses on experiences induced by classic psychedelics, which are substances capable of eliciting powerful psychoactive effects, characterized by distortions/alterations o...
There is substantial contemporary interest in psychedelic agents as medicines for maladies of the mind. This follows research in the 1950s and 1960s exploring the use of LSD and other psychedelics to treat a range of psychiatric illnesses as well as addictions. This research was shut down after prohibition of these drugs; however, the last decade h...
Background
Measures of cortical topology are believed to characterize large-scale cortical networks. Previous studies used region of interest (ROI)-based approaches with predefined templates that limit analyses to linear pair-wise interactions between regions. As cortical topology is inherently complex, a non-linear dynamic model that measures the...
Mental health research increasingly focuses on the relationship between psychiatric symptoms and observable manifestations of the face and body. In recent studies, psychiatric patients have shown distinct patterns in movement, posture and facial expressions, suggesting these elements could enhance clinical diagnostics.
The analysis of the facial ex...
Abstract: Deficits in memory performance have been linked to a wide range of neurological and neuropsychiatric conditions. While many studies have assessed the memory impacts of individual conditions, this study considers a broader perspective by evaluating how memory recall is differentially associated with nine common neuropsychiatric conditions...
ZUSAMMENFASSUNG
Zur Beantwortung der Frage, ob Psychedelika eine therapeutische Wirkung bei psychischen Erkrankungen aufweisen, ist entscheidend, sich mit möglichen Wirkmechanismen auseinanderzusetzen. Solche können auf psychopharmakologischer, neurobiologischer, neurosystemischer und psychotherapeutischer Ebene beschrieben werden. Neben der klassi...
Klassische Psychedelika wie Psilocybin, Lysergsäurediethylamid (LSD), Ayahuasca oder 5-Methoxy-Dimethyltryptamin (5-MeO-DMT) stehen wieder vermehrt im Fokus des psychiatrisch-psychotherapeutischen und neurowissenschaftlichen Interesses. Dies ist vor allem auf aktuelle klinische Studien zurückzuführen, die einen möglichen therapeutischen Nutzen von...
Background and Hypothesis
Abnormal thalamic nuclei volumes and their link to cognitive impairments have been observed in schizophrenia. However, whether and how this finding extends to the schizophrenia spectrum is unknown. We hypothesized a distinct pattern of aberrant thalamic nuclei volume across the spectrum and examined its potential associati...
Background: Decision-making alterations are present in psychiatric illnesses like major depressive disorder (MDD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and schizophrenia, linked to symptoms of the respective disorders. Understanding unique and shared decision-making alterations across these disorders is crucial for early diagnosis and treatment, es...
Background and hypothesis:
The cholinergic system is altered in schizophrenia. Particularly, patients' volumes of basal-forebrain cholinergic nuclei (BFCN) are lower and correlated with attentional deficits. It is unclear, however, if and how BFCN changes and their link to cognitive symptoms extend across the schizophrenia spectrum, including indi...
Background:
Structural MRI studies in people with first-episode psychosis (FEP) and those in the clinical high-risk (CHR) state have consistently shown volumetric abnormalities that depict changes in the structural complexity of the cortical boundary. The aim of the present study was to employ chaos analysis in the identification of people with ps...
Investigators in neuroscience have turned to Big Data to address replication and reliability issues by increasing sample sizes, statistical power, and representativeness of data. These efforts unveil new questions about integrating data arising from distinct sources and instruments. We focus on the most frequently assessed cognitive domain - memory...
Structural MRI studies in first-episode psychosis and the clinical high-risk state have consistently shown volumetric abnormalities. Aim of the present study was to introduce radiomics texture features in identification of psychosis. Radiomics texture features describe the interrelationship between voxel intensities across multiple spatial scales c...
Structural MRI studies in first-episode psychosis (FEP) and in clinical high risk (CHR) patients have consistently shown volumetric abnormalities in frontal, temporal, and cingulate cortex areas. The aim of the present study was to employ chaos analysis for the identification of brain topology differences in people with psychosis. Structural MRI we...
Negative symptoms, such as lack of motivation or social withdrawal, are highly prevalent and debilitating in patients with schizophrenia. Underlying mechanisms of negative symptoms are incompletely understood, thereby preventing the development of targeted treatments. We hypothesized that in patients with schizophrenia during psychotic remission, i...
The basal forebrain cholinergic nuclei (BFCN) provide the main cholinergic input to prefrontal cortices, the hippocampi, and amygdala. These structures are highly relevant for the regulation and maintenance of many cognitive functions, such as attention and memory. In vivo neuroimaging studies reported alterations of the cholinergic system in psych...
Structural MRI studies in first-episode psychosis and the clinical high-risk state have consistently shown volumetric abnormalities. Aim of the present study was to introduce radiomics texture features in identification of psychosis. Radiomics texture features describe the interrelationship between voxel intensities across multiple spatial scales c...
Structural MRI studies in first-episode psychosis (FEP) and in clinical high risk (CHR) patients have consistently shown volumetric abnormalities in frontal, temporal, and cingulate cortex areas. The aim of the present study was to employ chaos analysis in the identification of people with psychosis. Structural MRI were acquired from 73 CHR, 77 FEP...
Several observations suggest an impact of prematurity on the claustrum. First, the claustrum’s development appears to depend on transient subplate neurons of intra-uterine brain development, which are affected by prematurity. Second, the claustrum is the most densely connected region of the mammalian forebrain relative to its volume; due to its eff...
A potential pathophysiological mechanism of cognitive difficulties in schizophrenia is a dysregulated cholinergic system. Particularly, the cholinergic basal forebrain nuclei (BFCN), the source of cortical cholinergic innervation, support multiple cognitive functions, ranging from attention to decision-making. We hypothesized that BFCN structural i...
Aberrant dopamine function in the dorsal striatum and aberrant intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) between distinct cortical networks and thalamic nuclei are among the most consistent large-scale brain imaging findings in schizophrenia. A pathophysiological link between these two alterations is suggested by theoretical models based on striatal...
Negative symptoms such as anhedonia and apathy are among the most debilitating manifestations of schizophrenia (SZ). Imaging studies have linked these symptoms to morphometric abnormalities in 2 brain regions implicated in reward and motivation: the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and striatum. Higher negative symptoms are generally associated with redu...
Reduced global hippocampus volumes have been demonstrated in premature-born individuals, from newborns to adults; however, it is unknown whether hippocampus subfield (HCSF) volumes are differentially affected by premature birth and how relevant they are for cognitive performance. To address these questions, we investigated magnetic resonance imagin...
Advertising slogans serve the function of persuasive communication by presenting catchy phrases. To decide whether a slogan is convincing or not, cognitive reasoning is assumed to be complemented by a more implicit and intuitive route of information processing, presumably similar to evaluating normative judgments in moral statements. We employed fu...
Background
Human decision-making ranges between the extremes of automatic and fast model-free behavior (i.e., relying only on previous outcomes) and more flexible, but computationally demanding model-based behavior (i.e., implementing cognitive models). Model-based/model-free decision-making can be investigated using sequential decision tasks and h...
Background
In schizophrenia, among the most consistent brain changes are both aberrant dopamine function in the dorsal striatum and aberrant intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) between distinct cortical networks and thalamic nuclei; however, it is unknown whether these changes are pathophysiologically related. Such a relationship is expected be...
Among the most debilitating manifestations of schizophrenia are negative symptoms such as anhedonia and apathy. Imaging studies have linked these symptoms to morphometric abnormalities in two brain regions implicated in reward and motivation: the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and ventral striatum. Negative symptoms generally are associated with reduce...
Background:
Resting-state functional MRI (fMRI) studies commonly report alterations in 3 core networks in obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) — the frontoparietal network, the default mode network and the salience network — defined by functionally connected infraslow oscillations in ongoing brain activity. However, most of these studies observed s...
Premature birth bears an increased risk for aberrant brain development concerning its structure and function. Cortical complexity (CC) expresses the fractal dimension of the brain surface and changes during neurodevelopment. We hypothesized that CC is altered after premature birth and associated with long-term cognitive development. One-hundred-and...
In schizophrenia, among the most consistent brain changes are both aberrant dopamine function in the dorsal striatum and aberrant intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) between distinct cortical networks and thalamic nuclei; however, it is unknown whether these changes are pathophysiologically related. Such a relationship is expected because corti...
Abstract Background PET (positron emission tomography) biokinetic modelling relies on accurate quantitative data. One of the main corrections required in PET imaging to obtain high quantitative accuracy is tissue attenuation correction (AC). Incorrect non-uniform PET-AC may result in local bias in the emission images, and thus in relative activity...
Regulatory problems in infancy and toddlerhood have previously been associated with an increased risk of developing attention problems in childhood. We hypothesized that early regulatory problems are associated with attention problems via reduced inhibitory control. This prospective study assessed 1,459 children from birth to 8 years. Crying, feedi...
While there is consistent evidence for increased presynaptic dopamine synthesis capacity in the striatum of patients with schizophrenia during psychosis, it is unclear whether this also holds for patients during psychotic remission. This study investigates whether striatal dopamine synthesis capacity is altered in patients with schizophrenia during...
Background:
This study investigated characteristic large-scale brain changes in schizophrenia. Numerous imaging studies have demonstrated brain changes in schizophrenia, particularly aberrant intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) of ongoing brain activity, measured by resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, and aberrant gray matter...
Background:
Infant regulatory problems (RPs), i.e. problems with crying, feeding, and/or sleeping, are associated with behavioral and emotional problems in childhood. It is unclear, however, whether these behavioral and emotional problems persist into adulthood. The default mode (DMN) and salience networks (SN) support both interoceptive regulation...
This study investigated if crying, sleeping or feeding problems that co‐occur (multiple regulatory problems [RPs]) or are persistent predict attention problems and diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in childhood and adulthood. Participants were 342 individuals who were assessed at 5, 20, and 56 months for crying, sleeping,...
Background and aims:
To determine the combined impact of infant multiple/persistent regulatory problems (RPs), parenting quality and maternal mental health on childhood attention problems.
Study design:
A prospective, population-based cohort study including 16 paediatric hospitals in Southern Bavaria (Germany).
Subjects:
1459 infants were foll...
Schizophrenia is characterized by hypoconnectivity or decreased intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) between prefrontal-limbic cortices and thalamic nuclei, as well as hyperconnectivity or increased iFC between primary-sensorimotor cortices and thalamic nuclei. However, cortico-thalamic iFC overlaps with larger, structurally defined cortico-stri...
Neuroimaging studies report evidence for two distinct pathophysiological models of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): disrupted fronto-striatal circuits and impaired large-scale fronto-parietal-limbic intrinsic brain networks, defined by functionally connected (FC) infra-slow oscillations in ongoing brain activity. To synthesize this literature a...
Simultaneous PET/MR/EEG (Positron Emission Tomography – Magnetic Resonance – Electroencephalography), a new tool for the investigation of neuronal networks in the human brain, is presented here within the framework of the European Union Project TRIMAGE. The trimodal, cost-effective PET/MR/EEG imaging tool makes use of cutting edge technology both i...
http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(17)30611-X/abstract
http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(17)30569-3/abstract
Synchronizing neural processes, mental activities and social interactions are considered to be fundamental for the creation of temporal order on the personal and interpersonal level. Several different types of synchronization are distinguished, and for each of them examples are given: Self-organized synchronizations on the neural level giving rise...
Does a religion shape belief-related decisions and influence neural processing? We investigated an eminent bishop of the Catholic Church in Germany by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess neural processing while he was responding to short sentences of the Christian Bible, the Islamic Quran, and the Daodejing ascribed to Laoz...
There appears to be an inconsistency in experimental paradigms used in fMRI research on moral judgments. As stimuli, moral dilemmas or moral statements/ pictures that induce emotional reactions are usually employed; a main difference between these stimuli is the perspective of the participants reflecting first-person (moral dilemmas) or third-perso...
Presence has become a key-component in the study and use of virtual reality and although several contributing factors have been discovered, many remain to be investigated. The effects of expectancy have already been demonstrated in psychotherapy and medicine (i.e. pain perception, hypnosis). We hypothesized whether cognitive factors such as expecta...
Artworks provide sets of sensory stimuli that allow special insights into cognitive processes complementing results obtained with other experimental paradigms. Examples are given from visual art and music using behavioral measures and neuroimaging technology (fMRI). The following topics are addressed: creation and maintenance of personal identity,...
Recent neuroimaging studies indicate that there may be common ground for aesthetic and moral judgments. However, because previous studies focused on either aesthetic or moral judgments and did not compare the two directly, the issue remains open whether a common ground actually exists. We employed functional magnetic resonance imaging in order to s...