Division of General Psychiatry (Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy)
Position: Associate Professor
Phone: +43 1 01 40400 35930
E-Mail: christoph.kraus@muv.ac.at
Research Area
Deep Brain Stimulation, Vagus Nerve
Research Interests
Depression, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Grant(s)
Abstract
My professional career is dedicated to improving treatment outcomes of severe forms of psychiatric diseases with a special focus on mood disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder. To achieve these goals, I want to implement novel treatments and improve diagnostic markers to establish biological correlates and predictors of treatment outcomes. Reliable markers are urgently needed to introduce staging models that will inform patients, their relatives and healthcare providers on disease severity and potential future outcomes. Ultimately, a multimodal neuroscience-based approach to understand disease pathophysiology and improve treatment outcomes paves the way towards discovering new approaches to prevent and treat these devastating illnesses.
Techniques
To improve therapeutic outcomes in depression and OCD, our team currently uses third- and fourth-line treatments such as deep brain stimulation, vagus nerve stimulation and experimental pharmacological treatments. These neuroscience-based treatment methods have a high promise to improve outcomes of severely affected patients. At the same time, in our group we use the treatment modalities as tools to investigate brain circuit restoration during therapeutic effects and thus learn about therapeutic mechanisms and disease pathophysiology. Thereby our research program is translational in nature. We conduct experimental therapeutic studies with novel compounds and neuromodulatory methods and biomarkers from neuroimaging, electrophysiology as well as biochemical parameters from blood and CSF in cooperation with national and international research teams.
Selected publications
- Kraus C, Kadriu B, Lanzenberger R, Zarate C, Kasper S (2020) Prognosis and Improved Outcomes in Major Depression: A Review Focus, 18 (2): 220-235
| Weblink | - Kraus C, Klöbl M, Tik M, Auer B, Vanicek T, Geissberger N, Pfabigan D, Hahn A, Woletz M, Paul K, Komorowski A, Kasper S, Windischberger C, Lamm C, Lanzenberger R (2018) The pulvinar nucleus and antidepressant treatment: dynamic modeling of antidepressant response and remission with ultra-high field functional MRI Mol Psychiatry, 24 (5): 746-756
| Weblink | - Kraus C, Castrén E, Kasper S, Lanzenberger R (2017) Serotonin and Neuroplasticity – Links between molecular, functional and structural pathophysiology in depression Neurosci Biobehav R, 77: 317-326
| Weblink | - Kraus C, Hahn A, Savli M, Kranz G, Baldinger P, Höflich A, Spindelegger C, Ungersboeck J, Haeusler D, Mitterhauser M, Windischberger C, Wadsak W, Kasper S, Lanzenberger R (2012) Serotonin-1A receptor binding is positively associated with gray matter volume — A multimodal neuroimaging study combining PET and structural MRI Neuroimage, 63 (3): 1091-1098