Research

Research Priorities: Cognitive neuroscience, visual cognition, primate electrophysiology, functional medical imaging, attention and visual systems

Sabine Kastner is a German-American neuroscientist. She teaches neuroscience and psychology at Princeton University in the USA. The main focus of her research is the neural basis of visual and attention processes in primate brains as a basis of understanding healthy and pathological brain functions.

She uses a translational approach that combines the medical imaging of the human brain with physiological knowledge about patients with brain injuries or damage. Comparable studies on catarrhine monkeys show the part attributable to evolution. Sabine Kastner’s work focuses on gaining a better understanding of how large networks interact during different cognition processes, particularly concentrating on the interplay between the thalamus and the cerebral cortex. In studies of humans and macaques, Kastner’s team, in collaboration with other neuroscientists and researchers, discovered that attention is subject to a fast rhythmic process between concentration and distraction. As a result Sabine Kastner provided key contributions to a range of research questions, for example on the selection of behaviourally relevant information and the neural processes behind this, on the functional organisation of the human visual system on the level of the thalamus and the cortex, on the representation of object information in the temporal and parietal cortex, and on the development of cognitive performance and the associated neural networks in children.

Her studies on attention have provided more in-depth insights into the structure, function and dynamics of the underlying networks and are therefore extremely pertinent. These insights also shed new light on attention deficits in childhood.

Furthermore, Sabine Kastner is the Editor in Chief of the international journal “Progress in Neurobiology” and the open access journal “Frontiers for young minds/understanding neuroscience” and edited the “Handbook of Attention” (2014). She promotes and supports the scientific education of children as well as students, postdoctoral students and junior scientists.

Career

• since 2012 Visiting Scholar, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute (HWNI), University of California, Berkeley, USA
• since 2009 Professor of Psychology and Neurosciences, Princeton University, Princeton, USA
• since 2005 Scientific Director, The Regina and John Scully ’66 Center for the Neuroscience of Mind and Behavior, Princeton University, Princeton, USA
• 2005-2009 Associate Professor for Psychology and Neurosciences, Princeton University, Princeton, USA
• 2000-2005 Assistant Professor for Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, USA
• 1996-2000 Visiting Scholar, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), USA
• 1996 Lecturer, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Göttingen, the University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
• 1994-1996 Postdoctoral Fellow, Research Fellow, Max PIanck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany
• 1994 Completed doctorate to become Dr. med.
• 1993 State Examination for Medicine

Functions

• since 2021 Chairperson, Scientific Advisory Board, Center for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM), École Polytechnique Fédèrale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland
• since 2020 Member, Scientific Commission, German Science and Humanities Council, Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and German Research Foundation (DFG), Germany
• since 2020 Member, Scientific Advisory Board, Paris Brain Institute, Pitié-Salpêtrière University Hospital, Paris, France
• since 2019 Member, Finance Committee, Society for Neuroscience (SfN), Washington D.C., USA
• since 2019 Member, Editorial Board, BrainFacts.org, SfN, Washington D.C., USA
• since 2019 Member, Intermediate and Senior Fellowship Selection Committee, DBT/Wellcome Trust IndiaAlliance, India
• since 2019 Member, International Steering Committee, Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
• since 2019 Member, Executive Committee, PRIMatE Data and Resource Exchange (PRIME-DRE), International Neuroimaging Data-Sharing Initiative, Child Mind Institute, New York City, USA
• 2015-2018 Member, Publications Committee, SfN, Washington D.C., USA

Projects

• 2018-2021 Project “Educational Neuroscience of Visual Attention”, Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, Overdeck Family Foundation, New York City, USA
• 2017-2022 Project “Dynamic thalamocortical gating of corticocortical communication in visual active sensing”, Silvio O. Conte Center for Schizophrenia Research, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, National Institute of Health (NIH), USA
• 2016-2021 Project “Brain oscillations consortium”, J.S. McDonnell Foundation, Saint Louis, USA
• since 2012 Project “Functions of the thalamus in perception and cognition”, Princeton University, Princeton, NIH, USA
• since 2002 Project “Neural basis of visual attention”, Princeton University, Princeton, NIH, USA

Honours and Memberships

• 2021 Member, German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Germany
• 2020 Fellow, Society for Experimental Psychologists (SEP), USA
• 2019 Award for Education in Neuroscience, SfN
• 2016 Member, International Neuropsychology Symposium
• 2010 Fellow, American Psychological Society (APA), USA
• 2005 Young Investigator Award, Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS), Davis, USA