Andreas Strube, PhD

Research Interests

During my doctoral studies, I was mainly concerned with expectancy effects in pain perception, control and agency. I tested cognitive models derived from predictive coding, the free energy principle and active inference. I conducted various empirical experiments and used the EEG as the main physiological measurement. I used the EEG data to carry out time-frequency analyses and test cognitive models. I would now like to use this experience with the EEG and cognitive modeling in pain research to transfer it to depression research. I would like to focus on brain rhythms of depression: which oscillatory processes are related to depression? Another focus of my work will be the intersection of these two topics, namely the comorbidity of chronic pain and depression. I would like to examine both the process by which chronic pain develops into depression and the process by which depression develops into chronic pain. In the end, I would like to apply my scientific methods and test on a clinical sample whether we can make a prediction about a successful therapy for depression using EEG data.