News

Victoria Sinfield joins the Blanke Lab as a Fulbright Grantee

Published:25.09.25 — Victoria will explore how technologically driven visuo-vestibular manipulations, integrated with traditional meditation practices, can alter the experience of the bodily self.

Thomas Wynn joins the Blanke Lab as a Fulbright Grantee

Published:25.09.25 — Thomas will examine presence hallucinations in Lewy Body Dementia to better understand their cognitive and neural mechanisms.

Rare amnesic patient reveals body's role in autobiographical memory

Published:22.09.25 — A study in a rare amnesic patient caused by bilateral hippocampal damage revealed how bodily self-consciousness shapes autobiographical memory, highlighting the hippocampus and its connectivity.

Yannick Mijster joins the Blanke Lab as PhD candidate

Published:20.06.25 — Yannick will use artificial intelligence and home-based technology to unravel the brain mechanisms of apathy, agency and related cognitive functions in healthy participants and patients with Parkinson’s Disease.

Haotian Yao joins the Blanke Lab as PhD candidate

Published:20.06.25 — Haotian will explore new technodelic approaches to induce mental states characterized by ego-dissolution and non-duality, using immersive virtual reality, motion platforms, psychedelics, and brain stimulation.

Deconstructing the sense of self with VR-enhanced meditation

Published:02.06.25 — Using a newly developed VR platform, our study shows that VR-guided third-person perspective meditation reduces body ownership and self-identification, linking these changes in bodily self-consciousness to interoceptive and neural variations.

Maham Cheema joins the Blanke Lab as research assistant

Published:02.06.25 — Maham joins the hallucination engineering group in our Lab to investigate hallucination sensitivity and its relation to cognitive decline patients with Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies.

Seeing what isn't there: how Parkinson's affects social perception

Published:06.05.25 — Visual hallucinations in Parkinson’s disease are associated with deficits in social perception

Primary motor cortex and free will

Published:06.05.25 — We show how signals in primary motor cortex are related to human free will, developing a new voluntary action paradigm with a brain-machine interface. A step closer to understanding how thoughts become actions — and making brain-controlled tech feel like a body.

Pre-movement alpha oscillations in motor cortex shape sense of agency

Published:22.04.25 — Alpha oscillations in primary motor cortex prior to movement onset modulate sense of agency: new study published in Nature Communications

Non-invasive focused ultrasound reduces craving in opioid use disorde

Published:28.02.25 — Opioid use disorder is a major healthcare challenge in the US and an emerging challenge across Europe, with current treatments often falling short in preventing relapse. A study led by our close collaborators at Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute (Prof. Ali Rezai, West-Virginia University, US) explored the safety and feasibility of focused ultrasound (FUS) neuromodulation as a potential new approach to reduce substance cravings and use in individuals with severe opioid and co-occurring substance use disorders.

Arnaud Droxler joins the Blanke Lab as VR engineer

Published:28.02.25 — Arnaud will contribute to the development of immersive virtual reality setups for experimental research projects on autobiographical memory and identified presence hallucination, bringing his competences in programming, graphic design and human-machine interaction.

Andreea-Maria Gui joins the Blanke Lab as PhD candidate

Published:05.11.24 — Using fMRI data acquisition combined with VR techniques, Andreea will investigate the neural coupling between autobiographical episodic memory and self-consciousness.

Neurotechnology boosts memory without surgery

Published:31.10.24 — EPFL researchers have combined virtual reality, non-invasive brain stimulation and advanced brain imaging techniques to improve spatial navigation in healthy participants. The study is a first step in addressing dementia in an aging population without medication or surgery.

Functional connectivity fingerprints in Alzheimer's Disease

Published:22.10.24 — Functional connectivity patterns in the brain uniquely identify individuals with Alzheimer's disease. fMRI data show that while brain fingerprints remain distinct, the topology of regions/cognitive functions that makes individuals unique changes with disease progression.

Franco Regli Award 2022/2023 to Fosco Bernasconi

Published:25.09.24 — Fosco Bernasconi is the Franco Regli Prize's winner 2022/2023!

Hallucination brain networks can be self-regulated via neurofeedback

Published:18.09.24 — Sensitivity to robotically-induced hallucinations can be modulated following self-regulation guided-training on brain network dynamics

Embodying our memories with hippocampal-premotor cortex coupling

Published:12.09.24 — The sense of agency through bodily signals is important for the encoding and recollection of episodic memories, and premotor-hippocampal coupling is key in this process.

Qiaoyue Ren joins the Blanke Lab as postdoctoral researcher

Published:12.09.24 — Qiaoyue will work on self-related components of episodic memory, studying the impact of agency and intentional bodily movements on encoding and retrieval of autobiographical memory.

Lada Kohoutova joins the Blanke Lab as postdoctoral researcher

Published:12.09.24 — Lada Kohoutova will work on identifying neural alterations associated with cognitive decline and hallucinations in individuals with Parkinson’s disease.