“The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.“ Bertrand Russell
Stephan Lechner
Research Assistant
PhD Student at the University of Vienna, Austria
I did my BA in Philosophy at the University of Vienna, Austria, focusing on philosophy of mind. This interest led me down the rabbit hole of neuroscience where I hoped to find an empirical basis for the mind-brain relationship. I completed the "Middle European Interdisciplinary Master's Program in Cognitive Science" at the University of Vienna and spent 2 years as a graduate research assistant at the neurological clinic of the University Clinical Center in Ljubljana, Slovenia where I worked with various neurological and psychiatric patient populations.
I am interested in the nexus of psychiatry, neuroscience and philosophy of mind and believe that altered experience in psychiatric disorders can serve as a segway into studying the healthy mind. One focus of my research is to tease apart dynamic features that can distinguish conditions on the psychotic disorder-mood disorder axis. Currently, I work on schizophrenia and depression, where I aim to shed light on resting state deficits in the phase processes in narrow frequencies. Another project deals with the dynamics of thoughts in a mind-wandering paradigm in healthy participants.
In my free time, I like to read science fiction and host travellers from all over the world via Turstroots and Couchsurfing and ride my bike through Vienna.