Mai-Carmen is a postdoc in the joint project with Katja Wiech within the CRC 289 Treatment Expectation. She is interested in characterizing the cognitive and neural processes underlying brain diseases. She obtained her PhD in Clinical Neuroscience from University College London, investigating subjective time perception in healthy aging and dementia under the supervision of Prof. Jason Warren at the Dementia Research Centre. After a short career break in research administration (grant management), she returned to academic research with a postdoctoral position on post-traumatic stress disorders at the Medical School Hamburg. As part of the CRC 289, she is conducting an fMRI study to investigate the impact of perceived warmth and competence on pain perception and expectation of treatment efficacy in the context of patient-practitioner interactions.