Sabine Kastner
Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at Princeton University.
Sabine Kastner is a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at Princeton University and serves as the Scientific Director of Princeton’s neuroimaging facility. Kastner is the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Neuroscience and the Director of a Silvio O. Conte Center for Basic Research.
Kastner’s research focuses on the neural basis of visual perception, attention, and awareness in the healthy, adult primate brain, in patients with brain lesions and during development with >150 publications. She is known for her pioneering work on the neural basis of visual attention, her comparative studies in the human and monkey brain, and her groundbreaking studies on the role of the thalamus in perception and cognition.
Kastner was educated in Germany, earning an MD degree from the University of Dusseldorf and a PhD degree in neurophysiology from the University of Gottingen. After postdoctoral training at the National Institute of Mental Health, she joined the faculty at Princeton in 2000, where she was promoted to full professor in 2009.
Kastner is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Psychological Society, the Society for Experimental Psychology and a Member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina). She received the Young Investigator Award from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in 2005 and the George A. Miller Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience in 2023. Kastner is passionate about public outreach 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, being recognized with the SfN’s Award on Education in Neuroscience in 2019.
