Sandra Reinert

Sandra Reinert is a postdoc in the labs of Tom Mrsic-Flogel and Tim Behrens at the SWC. She investigates how neuronal representations of complex algorithms are formed in prefrontal cortex with learning and what inputs are required in that process.

During her PhD in the laboratory of Prof. Tobias Bonhoeffer and Prof. Mark Hübener at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, her research focused on neuronal underpinnings of category learning in early sensory and higher-order association cortices (Goltstein, 2018, 2021; Reinert, 2021). By developing a category learning paradigm in mice, she found that neurons in prefrontal cortex gradually acquire category selectivity with learning. Notably, this category representation generalized across different operant behaviors and reward contingencies (Reinert, 2021). She was awarded the Young Scientist Award 2022 by the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence for this work.