Christian Ruff

TMS Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research

Research

I study neural mechanisms of decision-making in perception and behaviour. Current interests include the study of top-down control processes via combinations of brain stimulation (TMS, tDCS) and neuroimaging (fMRI), and the effects of motivational factors (rewards, attention, social) on perception and action.

Selected key publications

Driver, J., Blankenburg, F., Bestmann, S., Vanduffel, W., Ruff, C. C.
Concurrent brain-stimulation and neuroimaging for studies of cognition.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2009, 13, 319-327.

Pleger, B., Ruff, C. C., Blankenburg, F., Kloppel, S., Driver, J., Dolan, R. J.
Influence of dopaminergically mediated reward on somatosensory decision making.
PLoS Biology, 2009, 7: e1000164.

Ruff, C. C., Blankenburg, F., Bjoertomt, O., Bestmann, S., Weiskopf, N., Driver, J. Hemispheric differences in frontal and parietal influences on human occipital cortex: direct confirmation with concurrent TMS-fMRI.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2009, 21, 1146-1161.

Ruff, C. C., Driver, J., Bestmann, S.
Combining TMS and fMRI: From 'virtual lesions' to functional-network accounts of cognition.
Cortex, 2009, 45, 1043-1049.

Pleger, B., Blankenburg, F., Ruff, C. C., Driver, J., Dolan, R. J.
Reward facilitates tactile judgments and modulates hemodynamic responses in human primary somatosensory cortex.
Journal of Neuroscience, 2008, 28, 8161-8168.

Ruff, C. C., Bestmann, S., Blankenburg, F., Bjoertomt, O., Josephs, O., Weiskopf, N., Deichmann, R., Driver, J. Distinct causal influences of parietal versus frontal areas on human visual cortex: evidence from concurrent TMS-fMRI.
Cerebral Cortex, 2008, 18, 817-827.

Schenkluhn, B., Ruff, C. C., Heinen, K., Chambers, C. D.
Parietal stimulation decouples spatial and feature-based attention.
Journal of Neuroscience, 2008, 28,11106-11110.

Bestmann, S., Ruff, C. C., Blakemore, C., Driver, J., Thilo, K. V.
Spatial attention changes excitability of human visual cortex to direct stimulation.
Current Biology, 2007, 17, 134-139.

Ruff, C. C., Kristjansson, A., Driver, J.
Readout from iconic memory involves similar neural processes as selective spatial attention.
Psychological Science, 2007, 18, 901-909.

Blankenburg, F., Ruff, C. C., Deichmann, R., Rees, G., Driver, J.
The cutaneous 'rabbit' illusion affects human primary sensory cortex somatopically.
PLoS Biology, 2006, 4, e69.

Pleger, B., Ruff, C. C., Blankenburg, F., Bestmann, S., Wiech, K., Stephan, K. E., Capilla, A., Friston, K. J., Dolan, R. J. Neural coding of tactile decisions in the human prefrontal cortex.
Journal of Neuroscience, 2006, 26, 12596-12601.

Ruff, C. C., Blankenburg, F., Bjoertomt, O., Bestmann, S., Freeman, E., Haynes, J.-D., Rees, G., Josephs, O., Deichmann, R., Driver, J.
Concurrent TMS-fMRI and psychophysics reveal frontal influences on human retinotopic visual cortex.
Current Biology, 2006, 16, 1479-1488.