Morten Kringelbach
Morten L Kringelbach is a professor of neuroscience at Aarhus University, Denmark and University of Oxford, UK, where his
Hedonia Research Group is based. He is a fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford, and is on the advisory board of Scientific American, and a board member of the world's first Empathy Museum.Research overview
Kringelbach has made contributions to a range of topics within neuroscience using neuroimaging, deep brain stimulation and whole-brain modelling. His research is focused on reverse-engineering the human brain and in particular he has
identified some of the evolutionary principles and heuristics of teleological computation enabling us to survive and thrive, which
depend on intact human brain systems related to emotion, pleasure and eudaimonia. Together with Kent Berridge he has
identified brain mechanisms underlying the reward system and identified a network of hedonic hotspots essential for the fundamental pleasure cycle of 'wanting', 'liking' and learning. In a large series of neuroimaging studies of many rewards, he has elucidated the spatiotemporal organisation of the orbitofrontal cortex, e.g. demonstrating a fast parental signature of infant cuteness even in adults who are not yet parents.
They have also investigated the close links between pleasure and happiness
Kringelbach has also worked with neurosurgeon Tipu Aziz to elucidate the neural mechanisms of deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, dystonia and chronic pain
Furthermore, Kringelbach and Gustavo Deco have developed a research programme of whole-brain modelling for combining structural connectivity data Diffusion Tensor Imaging with functional neuroimaging data such as fMRI and magnetoencephalography. This allows for the discovery of causal mechanisms of brain function, and they have e.g. identified fundamental mechanisms and principles of integration and segregation, as well as metastability and coherence. In time, these findings might help open up for a better understanding and potential treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders as well as the role of one of the cardinal symptoms, namely anhedonia, the lack of pleasure
