
Dr. Simon Ruch
Postdoc
- Phone
- +41 31 631 37 29
- simon.ruch@psy.unibe.ch
- Office
- A362
- Postal Address
- Fabrikstrasse 8
3012 Bern
Biography
Research Interests
Cognitive neuroscience, with a special focus on memory, sleep, and consciousness:
- Neural correlates of human episodic memory. How do we form, store, and retrieve memories?
- The cognitive and biological functions of sleep: memory consolidation, memory formation, synaptic down-scaling during sleep. Why do we sleep? Can we learn during sleep?
- Neural correlates of consciousness: How is conscious mentation generated in the brain? Why and how did consciousness evolve? What is the function of consciousness?
- The functional abilities of the human unconscious: subliminal perception, cognition during sleep, non-conscious decision-making. How are our decisions affected by unconscious mechanisms?
- Cognitive enhancement, neuro-stimulation. Can neuro-stimulation (e.g. in the treatment of epilepsy) be used to enhance cognitive abilities?
Publications
Ruch, S., Herbert, E., & Henke, K. (2017). Subliminally and Supraliminally Acquired Long-Term Memories Jointly Bias Delayed Decisions. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1542. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01542
Maridor, M., Ruch, S., Bangerter, A., Emery, V. (2017). Skepticism towards emerging infectious diseases and influenza vaccination intentions in nurses. Journal of Health Communication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2017.1296509
Ruch, S., Züst, M. A., & Henke, K. (2016). Subliminal messages exert long-term effects on decision-making. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 1, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niw013
Züst, M. A., Colella, P., Reber, T. P., Vuilleumier, P., Hauf, M., Ruch, S., & Henke, K. (2015). Hippocampus is place of interaction between unconscious and conscious memories. PLoS ONE, 10(3), e0122459. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0122459
Ruch, S., Koenig, T., Mathis, J., Roth, C., & Henke, K. (2014). Word encoding during sleep is suggested by correlations between word-evoked up-states and post-sleep semantic priming. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1319. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01319
Ruch, S., Markes, O., Duss, S. B., Oppliger, D., Reber, T. P., Koenig, T., Mathis, J., et al. (2012). Sleep stage II contributes to the consolidation of declarative memories. Neuropsychologia, 50, 2389–2396. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.06.008