{{short description|Austrian social neuroscientist}} {{Infobox scientist | name = Claus Lamm | birth_date = {{birth year and age|1973}} | birth_place = Lustenau, Austria | field = Social neuroscience, Environmental neuroscience | work_institution = University of Vienna (professor, group leader), Austrian Academy of Sciences (corresponding member) | known_for = | prizes = APS Lifetime Achievement Mentor Award 2024, Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Elected Board Member Austrian Academy of Sciences, Elected Corresponding Member Elisabeth Lutz Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.,<ref name=Academy>{{Cite web |url=http://stipendien.oeaw.ac.at/de/claus-lamm-2014 |title=Claus Lamm, 2014 | stipendien.at |access-date=2015-09-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161027104829/http://stipendien.oeaw.ac.at/de/claus-lamm-2014 |archive-date=2016-10-27 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Top Student Award 1997 (Foerderpreis des Bundesministeriums für Wissenschaft und Forschung) }} '''Claus Lamm''' (born in 1973 in Lustenau, Austria) is a Professor of Biological Psychology and the head of the Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Vienna. His research focuses on the psychological and biological mechanisms underlying social cognition, affect, and behavior.<ref name="SCAN">{{Cite web |title=SCAN-Unit |url=https://scan-psy.univie.ac.at/ |access-date=2024-04-29 |website=scan-psy.univie.ac.at |language=en}}</ref> His main research interest are the neural underpinnings of empathy, to whose understanding he has made pioneering contributions.<ref>Lamm, C., Batson, C.D., & Decety, J. (2007). The neural substrate of human empathy: Effects of perspective-taking and cognitive appraisal. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19(1), 42-58. [http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jocn.2007.19.1.42#.Vge_QpeXBns doi:10.1162/jocn.2007.19.1.42]</ref>
==Academic career and achievements==
Claus Lamm received his Diploma and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Vienna. He then joined the lab of Jean Decety, first at the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) in Bron, France (2005), and then at the University of Chicago (2006-2008). Subsequently, he joined Tania Singer’s research group at the Laboratory of Social and Neural Systems Research (founded by Ernst Fehr, University of Zurich). In 2010, Claus Lamm returned to the University of Vienna as a Professor of Biological Psychology.
He is the director and founder of the Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit,<ref name="SCAN" /> and currently also the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Psychology. Claus Lamm is a board member and co-director of the Cognitive Science Research Hub.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Forschungsverbund Vienna Cognitive Science Hub |url=https://cognitivescience.univie.ac.at/ |access-date=2024-04-29 |website=cognitivescience.univie.ac.at |language=en}}</ref> He also established and directs the MRI Center of the University of Vienna.<ref>{{Cite web |title=MR Center |url=https://psychologie.univie.ac.at/en/research/labs/mr-center/ |access-date=2022-09-12 |website=psychologie.univie.ac.at |language=en}}</ref> Together with [https://vetdoc.vu-wien.ac.at/vetdoc/suche.person_uebersicht?sprache_in=en&menue_id_in=101&id_in=3582 Ludwig Huber] he directs one of only a handful of comparative canine neuroimaging facilities that currently exist worldwide.[https://ccnu.univie.ac.at/staff/]
In 2014, he was elected to become a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and he received the Elisabeth Lutz Prize by the same institution in recognition for his work on the biological and neural bases of social behavior.<ref name="Academy" /> In 2024, he was a recipient of the APS Lifetime Achievement Mentor Award [https://www.psychologicalscience.org/members/awards-and-honors/aps-mentor-award/mentor-award-recipients], and his research group for his 50th birthday wrote a "paper" to honor his mentoring style [https://ucloud.univie.ac.at/index.php/s/RFZ2wWiKrQpo3mS?openfile=true].
His research examines human social behavior using an interdisciplinary, multi-level approach. He combines behavioral and experimental psychology with methods from neuroimaging, electroencephalography, transcranial brain stimulation, psychopharmacology and psychoneuroendocrinology. He also actively collaborates with clinical investigators <ref name="cluster">{{Cite web |title=Interuniversitäre Clusterprojekte der Uni Wien und MedUni Wien |url=http://forschungscluster.meduniwien.ac.at/mmi-cns/}}</ref> and with cognitive biologists.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.wwtf.at/projects/research_projects/details/index.php?PKEY=2106_DE_O|title=WWTF|access-date=2015-09-27|archive-date=2016-03-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304073512/http://www.wwtf.at/projects/research_projects/details/index.php?PKEY=2106_DE_O|url-status=dead}}</ref> In several papers published in journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Journal of Neuroscience, and NeuroImage, Lamm and his collaborators were able to show that empathy is a complex construct for which two main components are essential: shared affective representations, and self-other distinction.<ref>Lamm C. & Majdandžić Y. (2015). The role of shared neural activations, mirror neurons, and morality in empathy – A critical comment. Neuroscience Research, 90, 15-24. [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168010214002314 doi:10.1016/j.neures.2014.10.008]</ref><ref>Decety, J., & Lamm, C. (2007). The role of the right temporoparietal junction in social interaction: How low-level computational processes contribute to meta-cognition. The Neuroscientist, 13(6), 580-593. [http://nro.sagepub.com/content/13/6/580.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc doi:10.1177/1073858407304654]</ref> More recently, he could show using the phenomenon of placebo analgesia that empathy for pain is grounded in self-experienced pain <ref>Rütgen, M., Seidel, E.M., Riecansky, I., Lamm, C. (2015). Reduction of empathy for pain by placebo analgesia suggests functional equivalence of empathy and first-hand emotion experience. Journal of Neuroscience, 35(23): 8938-8947. [http://www.jneurosci.org/content/35/23/8938.abstract doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3936-14.2015]</ref> He has also been engaged in comparative research for several years, using behavioral <ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Adriaense|first1=Jessie E. C.|last2=Martin|first2=Jordan S.|last3=Schiestl|first3=Martina|last4=Lamm|first4=Claus|last5=Bugnyar|first5=Thomas|date=2019-05-20|title=Negative emotional contagion and cognitive bias in common ravens (Corvus corax)|journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences|language=en|volume=116|issue=23|pages=11547–11552|doi=10.1073/pnas.1817066116|issn=0027-8424|pmc=6561263|pmid=31110007|bibcode=2019PNAS..11611547A |doi-access=free}}</ref> and neuroscience <ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ccnu.univie.ac.at/|title=Comparative Canine Neuroimaging Unit|website=ccnu.univie.ac.at|language=de|access-date=2019-10-17}}</ref> approaches to gain a deeper understanding of the convergent evolution of empathy and related phenomena. Furthermore, one of his main research foci is environmental social neuroscience and the investigation of why people make pro-environmental decisions and how we can promote climate change mitigation, as well as how specific environments impact human health and well-being [https://scan-psy.univie.ac.at/research/]. This approach has also been highlighted in a perspective paper in Nature Climate Change (Doell et al., 2023).
==Selected works==
* Doell, K.C., Berman, M.G., Bratman, G.N. et al. Leveraging neuroscience for climate change research. ''Nature Climate Change'', 13, 1288–1297 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01857-4 * Lamm, C., Bukowski, H., & Silani, G. (2016). From shared to distinct self–other representations in empathy: evidence from neurotypical function and socio-cognitive disorders. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 371: 20150083. doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0083 * Rütgen M., Seidel, E. M., Silani, G., Riecansky, G., Hummer, A., Windischberger, C., Petrovic, P. & Lamm, C. (2015). Placebo analgesia and its opioidergic regulation suggest that empathy for pain is grounded in self pain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(41), E5638-E5646. doi:10.1073/pnas.1511269112 * Lamm C. & Majdandžić Y. (2015). The role of shared neural activations, mirror neurons, and morality in empathy – A critical comment. ''Neuroscience Research'', 90, 15-24. doi:10.1016/j.neures.2014.10.008 * Lamm, C., Decety, J., & Singer, T. (2011). Meta-analytic evidence for common and distinct neural networks associated with directly experienced pain and empathy for pain. ''NeuroImage'', 54(3), 2492-2502. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.10.014 * Steininger, M.O., White, M.P., Lengersdorff, L., Zhang, L., Smalley, A.J., Kühn, S., & Lamm, C. (2015). Nature exposure induces analgesic effects by acting on nociception-related neural processing. ''Nature Communications'', 16(1), 2037. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-56870-2.
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== * [https://scan-psy.univie.ac.at/about-us/ Claus Lamm's homepage at the University of Vienna]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lamm, Claus}} Category:Academic staff of the University of Vienna Category:1973 births Category:Living people Category:People from Lustenau Category:Inserm people