Environmental Neuroscience: On how the physical environment affects brain and mental health

Speaker: Simone Kühn

Host: Alicia Schowe

About the speaker:

Simone Kühn is the Director of the Center for Environmental Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin (MPIB), a full professor at the Department of Psychiatry at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf and affiliated with the Clinic for Psychiatry at Charité University Medicine heading a group on Psychiatric Environmental Neuroscience (PEN) there. With her background in cognitive neuroscience and psychology her research has focused on the effects of environmental factors on brain plasticity and cognitive performance. Her recent work includes the application of functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to test how environmental factors shape the brain. She is part of the executive committee of the Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II) representing the MPIB. Her expertise in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analyses and geographical ecological momentary assessment (GEMA) in order to characterize the physical living environment of individuals will be highly valuable for the planned data acquisition.