Johannes Passeck­er

Bridging the Species Gap in Translational Psychiatry

Bridg­ing the Species Gap in Trans­la­tion­al Psychiatry

Abstract

The talk will intro­duce ear­li­er col­lab­o­ra­tive work on how pre­frontal and hip­pocam­pal neu­ronal activ­i­ty pat­terns sup­port and give rise to goal-direct­ed behav­iours rel­e­vant for high­er cog­ni­tion. Results will fur­ther inte­grate cross-species approach­es and com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el­ling. The lat­er talk will intro­duce ongo­ing work, specif­i­cal­ly focus­ing on unrav­el­ing mech­a­nis­tic symp­to­ma­tol­ogy of psy­chot­ic dis­or­ders. It will also pro­vide a per­spec­tive on how we can enhance trans­la­tion­al psy­chi­a­try through per­son­al­ized and mul­ti-modal strategies.

Biog­ra­phy

His sci­en­tif­ic jour­ney start­ed at the Flan­dern Insti­tute of Biotech­nol­o­gy, Bel­gium and Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin, Ire­land where he received his PhD in 2011. He then fol­lowed with post­doc­tor­al train­ing at the Cen­ter for Brain research (Klaus­berg­er Lab) in Vien­na, Aus­tria. In 2018 he joined as Asso­ciate Sci­en­tist the esteemed Zuck­er­man Mind Brain Behav­iour Insti­tute at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty (Joseph Gogos Lab) in New York City, USA where he received a pres­ti­gious NARSAD Young Inves­ti­ga­tor Award. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, he served as a Vis­it­ing Sci­en­tist at the Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science Sec­tion (Joshua Gor­don) at the Nation­al Insti­tute of Neu­ro­log­i­cal Dis­or­ders and Stroke. In 2021, he returned to Aus­tria in a tenure track capac­i­ty and build a new research group on trans­la­tion­al sys­tems neu­ro­science at the Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty Inns­bruck. The lab stud­ies deci­sion-mak­ing in health and dis­ease. Among oth­er activ­i­ties, he serves as the sec­re­tary of the Aus­tri­an Neu­ro­science Asso­ci­a­tion and is active­ly involved in co-found­ing a start­up focused on dig­i­tal psy­chi­a­try diagnostics.