© Anja Schneider

I am a cognitive neuroscientist and psychologist based between Leipzig and Berlin. As doctoral candidate of the Max Planck School of Cognition, I am conducting my research in the Department of Neurology of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) under the supervision of Arno Villringer. My research focuses on the role of respiration-brain-coupling in somatosensory perception. I am interested in understanding how cardiovascular function aides brain function and cognitive performance in detecting subtle tactile stimuli delivered to the skin - with special focus on stimulus expectation and respiratory flexibility. Before joining the MPI CBS in 2022, I got the chance to be trained and mentored by Hugo Critchley at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, University of Sussex.

I did both my undergraduate and graduate studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich and wrote my master thesis on how visual distractors interfere with response inhibition given their temporal alignment to heartbeat signals (with Simone Schütz-Bosbach and Amanda Marshall). Before my time in Munich, I studied some logic and philosophy at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.

As research assistant/ intern at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich and at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, I supported projects on dyadic social interaction via eye gaze (with Leo Schilbach and Dimitris Bolis) and on egocentricity in emotion recognition using tDCS and the development of social cognition training tools for autistic and non-clinical elderly adults (with Isabel Dziobek and Anne Weigand). As research assistant to Nikos Koutsouleris’ group in the LMU Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, I supported the project ‘Personalised prognostic tools for early psychosis management’; that experience fostered my interest in developmental and transdiagnostic approaches to psychiatry.

Besides my scientific work, I have been serving as cohort representative for the Max Planck School of Cognition and as speaker of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee of the MPI CBS. Amongst else, I am the main author to the Gender Equality Plan 2024-2026 of the MPI CBS and am currently conceptualizing a service that tracks gender (im)balances in citation practices.

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@liobaenk.bsky.social