Morten L. Kringelbach's research group >> Hedonia: TrygFonden Research Group

The central premise of Hedonia: TrygFonden Research Group is that in order to more effectively treat affective disorders, we need to develop a better understanding of hedonic processing – that is the affective component of sensory processing – in the human brain.

Pleasure is central to our lives and intimately linked to emotional, cognitive and reward processing in the brain. In general, hedonic experience is arguably at the heart of what makes us human, but at the same time it is also one of the most important factors keeping us from staying healthy. Understanding the underlying brain mechanisms can therefore help us understand and potentially treat the serious problems of affective disorders.

Hedonia: TrygFonden Research Group is a transnational research group based both in the Department of Psychiatry, Oxford, and at CFIN, Aarhus University, Denmark. The overall goal is to understand the fundamental neural mechanisms underlying human sensory and social pleasures, in order to increase our understanding and potential treatment of depression, obesity and eating disorders as well as with problems of parent-child attachment.

This is accomplished through the study of normal, neuropsychiatric and clinical populations using converging neuroimaging methods such as magnetoencephalography (MEG) and deep brain stimulation (DBS) combined with functional MRI, PET and DTI.

Morten L. Kringelbach

Morten L. Kringelbach, D.Phil., is the director of the TrygFonden Research Group. He is a Senior Research Fellow at Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford and a Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark, as well as Extraordinary JRF and College Lecturer in Neuroscience at The Queen's College, University of Oxford.

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