Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering
Position: Associate Professor
ORCID: 0000-0002-9944-0190
T +43 1 40400 64630
christian.windischberger@meduniwien.ac.at
Keywords
Amygdala; Brain Mapping; Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Emotions; Frontal Lobe; Functional Neuroimaging; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Motor Cortex; Retinotopy; Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation; Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation; Visual Cortex
Research group(s)
- Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Head: Christian Windischberger
Research Area: Mapping the functional organization of the human brain
Members: - MR Physics
Head: Christoph Juchem
Research Area: The Division of MR Physics is pursuing basic methodological and translational/clinical research in the areas of magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and spectroscopy.
Members: - Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)
Head: Christian Windischberger
Members: - Brain Stimulation
Head: Martin Tik
Research Area: Martin Tik and his team specialize in transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore and modulate brain function. Their research discovered neural circuits involved in affective disorders, particularly depression. They utilize innovative approaches that integrate chronometric TMS with brain imaging. Collaborating with leading international institutions (Stanford, Toronto, Hongkong) they advance personalized brain stimulation therapy.
Members: - Combining Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation (TUS) with fMRI
Head: Christian Windischberger
Research Area: Ultrasound waves are widely used to image anatomical structures in virtually every part of the body, including the brain. Transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) can noninvasively excite or inhibit neural activity in targeted brain regions. Together with collaborators across the world, we develop an integrated TUS-MRI system that will, for the first time, provide MR-validated stimulation of cortical and subcortical targets in the human brain.
Members:
Research interests
We are a functional neuroimaging research group at the Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering and the MR Center of Excellence at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. Closely connected to the Vienna General Hospital (AKH Wien), one of the largest hospitals in the world, and not too far away from the University of Vienna, the MR Center is an ideal place for our fMRI group for interdisciplinary clinical and basic biomedical research, as well as collaborations in biological psychology and cognitive science projects. Furthermore, the improvement and development of novel acquisition, data processing and analysis methods are central topics of our group.
Techniques, methods & infrastructure
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
- Ultra-high field fMRI (7 Tesla)
- Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
- Transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS)
- Neuronavigation
Grants
- CITRUS - Closed-loop Individualized image-guided Transcranial Ultrasonic Stimulation (2022)
Source of Funding: EU, European Innovation Council - Pathfinder
Coordinator of the collaborative project - Stimulus efficacy in retinotopic mapping (2022)
Source of Funding: FWF (Austrian Science Fund), Stand-alone project
Principal Investigator - Calibrated brain stimulation via concurrent TMS/fMRI (2019)
Source of Funding: FWF (Austrian Science Fund), Stand-Alone Project
Principal Investigator - Convergent evolution of the social brain? A comparative dog-human fMRI approach (EVOSOCBRAIN) (2019)
Source of Funding: WWTF (Vienna Science and Technology Fund), Cognitive Sciences
Principal Investigator - A multimodal approach towards an objective assessment of macular function at retinal and cortical levels (2018)
Source of Funding: FWF (Austrian Science Fund), KLIF
Principal Investigator - Functional networks underlying emotion processing (2018)
Source of Funding: EU, MSCA-IF
Principal Investigator - Cognition and Functional Connectivity after elective Treatment of Brain Aneurysms (2017)
Source of Funding: FWF (Austrian Science Fund), KLIF
Principal Investigator - High-Resolution 3D Printing (2017)
Source of Funding: aws (austria wirtschaftsservice), PRIZE
Principal Investigator - CREAM - Creativity Enhancement Through Advanced Brain Mapping and Stimulation (project partner) (2013)
Source of Funding: EU, FP7-ICT-2013-10
Principal Investigator - Man4Gen - Manual Control of 4th Generation Airliners (project partner) (2012)
Source of Funding: EU, FP7-AAT-2012-RTD-1
Principal Investigator - LIKE ME (project partner) (2011)
Source of Funding: WWTF (Vienna Science and Technology Fund), Cognitive Sciences Call
Principal Investigator - OPIOIDEMPATHY (project partner) (2011)
Source of Funding: WWTF (Vienna Science and Technology Fund), Cognitive Sciences Call
Principal Investigator - Networks of Anxiety (2008)
Source of Funding: OeNB (Oesterreichische Nationalbank), Anniversary Fund
Principal Investigator
Selected publications
- Rütgen, M. et al., 2015. Placebo analgesia and its opioidergic regulation suggest that empathy for pain is grounded in self pain. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 112(41), pp.E5638-E5646. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1511269112.
- Tik, M. et al. (2023) ‘Concurrent TMS/fMRI reveals individual DLPFC dose-response pattern’, NeuroImage, 282, p. 120394. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120394.
- Mittal, S. et al. (2026) ‘GEM-pRF: GPU-empowered mapping of population receptive fields for large-scale fMRI analysis’, Medical Image Analysis, 109, p. 103891. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.media.2025.103891.
- Biswal, B.B. et al., 2010. Toward discovery science of human brain function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(10), pp.4734-4739. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0911855107.
- Grosshagauer, S. et al. (2026) ‘Reducing target E-field variability in repetitive TMS through online motion compensation’, Brain Stimulation, 19(1), p. 102990. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brs.2025.102990.