The KEY Institute for Brain-Mind Research, University Hospital of Psychiatry, Zurich

Overview

With the financial support of The KEY Foundation for Brain-Mind Research, Zurich (President: Dr. Kieko Kochi), a non-profit organization accredited in Zurich, the KEY Institute was established January 1995 at the University Hospital of Psychiatry in Zurich with Prof. Dietrich Lehmann as scientific director. Our research goal is the elucidation of human brain mechanisms of cognitive and emotional information processing. We use multichannel brain-electric field recordings (EEG/ERP) to measure brain activity during spontaneous mentation and stimulus-evoked processing in normal subjects and psychiatric patients. Brain field data can be viewed as a series of momentary, spatial potential distributions (map landscapes). These sequences can be parsed into microstate segments of quasi-stable landscape, the putative "Atoms of Thought".The three-dimensional distribution of the electrically active neural tissue can be evaluated using low-resolution electro-magnetic tomography LORETA. (Click here to download a freeware version of LORETA). We are currently also organizing the 8th World Congress of the International Society for Brain Electromagnetic Topography (ISBET) which will be held March 6-8, 1997 (reception evening March 5) at the Main Building of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland.