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The Viennese psychoanalysis/neuroscience study group has grown over the past year, particularly in the numbers of neurologists participating in our activities. This has benefited discussion in the group, intensifying and enriching it considerably.
During the last academic year our group met regularly for discussion that mainly centered on neuroscientific papers from a psychoanalytic perspective. We also viewed and discussed the lecture series A Beginner's Guide to the Brain, presented by Mark Solms. We will continue our deliberations with the neurosciences on the basis of our psychoanalytic understanding of the mind.
Research activity was focused on two projects. The aim of the first project is an early diagnosis of Alzheimer's dementia: The pathological process of Alzheimer's disease starts in the entorhinal cortex, then involves the hippocampus some years later. This degeneration of hippocampal structures leads to the first symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, namely an impairment of memory. A clinical correlate of entorhinal damage is unknown. Our study will attempt to find and describe a possible clinical correlate of a selective entorhinal lesion using a neuropsychoanalytic approach.
The second research project is focused on the neuropsychology of dreams: Recent neuroscientific findings strongly support the assumption that the amygdaloid complex and the hippocampal formation could play an important role in dream formation. The aim of this study is to investigate changes in dream content of humans with unilateral lesions of the amygdala and the hippocampus.
A future research project is planned in the area of epilepsy.