Andreea Diaconescu

Dr. Andreea Diaconescu is a cognitive and computational neuroscientist, with particular interest in mathematical modelling of maladaptive behaviour and whole-brain dysconnectivity in psychiatric populations. At the Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics (CAMH) she leads the “Cognitive Network Modelling” team focused on developing, validating, and applying hierarchical Bayesian models that infer individual-specific disturbances of information processing in neuronal circuits from behaviour, brain imaging and electrophysiological data. These “neurocomputational assays” are used to address concrete clinical problems in psychiatry.

Dr. Diaconescu has trained in a diverse set of environments and specialties since receiving her bachelors of psychology with honors from York University in 2005. Under the supervision of Prof. Randy McIntosh at the Rotman Research Institute, she completed her PhD in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Toronto. Dr. Diaconescu has then worked as a postdoctoral scientist in Zurich at the Translational Neuromodelling Unit (University of Zurich and ETH Zurich), and as a junior group leader in Basel at the University Psychiatric Hospital (University of Basel).
 

Research Synopsis

My main lines of research are:

1.    Design of cognitive tasks focused on specific symptoms probing different aspects of maladaptive cognition in psychiatric disorders.

2.    Development of modelling techniques for inferring effective connectivity, synaptic plasticity and neuromodulation from fMRI and EEG data, e.g. hierarchical Bayesian modelling, dynamic causal modelling (DCM), and Bayesian model selection (BMS).

3.    Experimental neuroimaging studies on the physiological determinants of individual mechanisms underlying aberrant learning and decision-making in early psychosis and affective disorders.

4.    Systematic model validation in physiological, pharmacological and patient studies.

5.    Clinical applications: Model-based diagnostic classifications that are pathophysiologically interpretable and allow for individual treatment predictions. 

Recent Publications

Diaconescu, A. O., Hauke, D. J., & Borgwardt, S. (2019). Models of persecutory delusions: a mechanistic insight into the early stages of psychosis. Molecular Psychiatry: 1.

Stephan, K.E., Iglesias, S., Heinzle, J., & Diaconescu, A.O. (2015). Translational Perspectives for Computational Neuroimaging. Neuron, 87(4): 716-32.

Wellstein, K. V.*, Diaconescu, A. O. *, Bischof, M., Rüesch Ranganadan, A., Paolini, G., Aponte, E., Ullrich, J., & Stephan, K. E. (2019). Social inference and beliefs differ in individuals with subclinical persecutory delusional tendencies. Schizophrenia Research, doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2019.08.031.

* Authors contributed equally to this work.

Appointments

Honours and Awards

Grants

Swiss National Foundation Ambizione Grant: (March 2017 – February 2020)

Novartis Foundation for Medical-Biological Research: (March 22nd 2019)