Elena Isenberg

LIFE Fellow since 2023, MPI for Human Development

I am a predoctoral student in the Center for Environmental Neuroscience at the MPIB under the supervision of Simone Kühn. I received my bachelor’s in psychology from McGill University in Montreal, followed by my master’s in social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience from Freie Universität Berlin. In my master’s, I investigated the effect of pre-conceived notions about different environments on rumination and network connectivity, and whether trait mindfulness moderated this effect. My research interests broadly lie in investigating multiple facets of the positive impacts of nature: when in the lifespan do these positive effects appear, who is most susceptible to them, in which contexts are they replicable, what sensory modalities are driving the effects, and how we can leverage this effect to improve well-being on a large scale.

Dissertation project:

Biophilia across the lifespan