Sabine Kastner is a German-born American cognitive neuroscientist. She is professor of psychology at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
. She also holds a visiting scientist appointment at the
University of California at Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...
.
She is an elected member of the Society for Experimental Psychology (2020), American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2022), National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Germany (2021), the International Neuropsychology Symposium (2016), and a Fellow of the
American Psychological Society
The Association for Psychological Science (APS), previously the American Psychological Society, is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in ...
(2010). She received the Young Investigator Award of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (2005), the Society for Neuroscience Award for Education in Neuroscience (2019), and the George A. Miller Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience.
Biography
Early life and education
Kastner grew up in
Hannover, Germany
Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany a ...
, where she attended the Wilhelm-Raabe-Gymnasium. She was the first in her family to earn a high school diploma. Ranking in the top 1% of high school students nationwide earned her a fellowship in the German National Scholarship Foundation. Kastner initially studied history and philosophy at the Georg-August-University in Göttingen (Germany). After earning the equivalent of a BA degree, Kastner decided to pursue degrees in medicine and neuroscience to prepare her for a career in science, and she studied at Georg-August-University (Göttingen, Germany), Heinrich-Heine-University (Düsseldorf, Germany), the Institute of Neurology (London, U.K.) and the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (Göttingen, Germany).
Academic career
Kastner was trained as a vision scientist and primate electrophysiologist by Otto Creutzfeldt and studied the neural basis of a color illusion as a PhD student at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. She then became interested in cognition, studying neural correlates of visual search in the monkey visual system. Kastner then joined
Leslie Ungerleider
Leslie G. Ungerleider (1946–2020) was an experimental psychologist and neuroscientist, previously Chief of the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at the National Institute of Mental Health. Ungerleider was known for introducing the concepts of ...
’s laboratory at the National Institute of Mental Health to receive training in functional magnetic resonance imaging. Together with Robert Desimone, she pioneered translating mechanistic principles from primate physiology into functional brain imaging studies in humans. This approach laid the groundwork for an understanding of attention function in the human brain.
In her laboratory at Princeton University, Kastner established the functional architecture of the attention network and defined functional principles for space-, feature and object-based attention, also extending them to natural vision. She was the first to show that cognitive mechanisms were not confined to the neocortex, but also operated in the
thalamus
The thalamus (from Greek θάλαμος, "chamber") is a large mass of gray matter located in the dorsal part of the diencephalon (a division of the forebrain). Nerve fibers project out of the thalamus to the cerebral cortex in all directions, ...
, a deep and ‘old’ brain structure. In addition, she has studied various aspects of visual perception in the healthy, adult primate brain as well as in patients with brain lesions and during development. Combining functional brain imaging with intracranial electrophysiology, Kastner studies the human and non-human primate brain in direct comparison with the goal to establish functional principles underlying cognition that can be linked to behavior at the level of cognitive large-scale networks.
Service
Kastner is the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Neuroscience and specialty chief editor of the children's open access science journal
Frontiers for Young Minds
''Frontiers for Young Minds'' (FYM) is an online non-profit, open access academic journal that publishes STEM articles "edited by kids for kids." UC Berkeley professor of psychology and neuroscience Robert Knight launched the journal at the 2013 S ...
. She has served as Editor-in-Chief of Progress in Neurobiology (2018-2022). She previously served as reviewing and senior editor at the Journal of Neuroscience, eLife, Neuropsychologia and NeuroImage and on the advisory boards for brainfacts.org and eNeuro.
Kastner served for the Society for Neuroscience as a member of the publications committee and is presently a member of the finance committee.
Kastner serves as adviser to the
German Council of Science and Humanities
The ''Wissenschaftsrat'' (''WR''; German Science and Humanities Council) is an advisory body to the German Federal Government and the state (''Länder'') governments. It makes recommendations on the development of science, research, and the univers ...
for their excellence strategy program.
Public education and outreach
Kastner is active in public outreach activities such as fostering the careers of young women in science, promoting neuroscience in schools and public education and exploring the intersection of visual neuroscience and art.
Distinguished Lectures
* George A. Miller Lecture, Cognitive Neuroscience Society, 2023
* Keynote Lecture, 22nd International Conference on Biomagnetism, Birmingham, UK, 2022
* Special Lecture, Society for Neurosience Annual Meeting, San Diego, 2018
* Attneave Lecture,
University of Oregon
The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...
, 2018
* Inaugural Marianne Fillenz Lecture, Department of Anatomy & Physiology,
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
, 2018
* Keynote Lecture, Vision Sciences Society meeting, St. Petersburg, 2016
* Creutzfeldt Lecture, 11th Meeting of the German Neuroscience Society, Göttingen, Germany, 2015
* Key Note Lecture, Human Brain Mapping, Honolulu, 2015
* Distinguished Fellow & SAGE Lecture, Sage Center for the Study of the Mind, Santa Barbara, 2014
* Donders Lecture, Donders Institute, Nijmwegen, Netherlands, 2014
* 2nd Homewood Brain and Cognition Lecture,
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...
Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...
, 2012
Personal life
Kastner has two children and is married to the American neuroscientist and novelist