Overview
Our subjective identity is a bundle of memories, in particular memories of episodes we experienced in our life. Not only which episodes of our life we remember but also the quality of these memories, for instance how vivid, how emotional, how detailed there are, influences how we think about us. Moreover, our memories of past experiences influence often also our decisions. This relationship between our memories and our identity makes it particularly fascinating to study the cognitive, physiological and neural processes that modulate episodic memory formation and retrieval. as well as interactions between memory and decision making.
(Just a short personal note to avoid confusion with respect to my name: Upon marrying in 2003, my official last name became ‘Sommer-Blöchl’. However, as this name is unpronouncable for most non-Germans and for simplicity's sake, I use my maiden name ‘Sommer’ for scientific purposes.)
