Janina Neufeld received her PhD training at the Center for Systems Neuroscience Hannover, where she investigated the brain mechanisms underlying synesthesia, a phenomenon where specific stimuli automatically trigger additional sensory-like experiences. Neufeld’s postdoctoral training at the University of Reading, and Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, focused on the brain correlates of autism. She developed an independent line of research on the link between synesthesia and mental health conditions and was among the first researchers to publish scientific evidence on the co-occurrence of synesthesia and autism.

Neufeld aims to elucidate the causes of both synesthesia and autism and the challenges and strengths linked to these conditions. Using twin design, she disentangles genetic and environmental contributions to behavioral and brain alterations in synesthesia and autism, and the link between synesthesia and a range of mental health conditions.

Neufeld collaborates nationally and internationally with experts from psychiatry, genetics, epidemiology, neuroimaging, environmental neuroscience and perception. She published original research on brain function and perception in autism in internationally renowned journals, including Nature Reviews Neurology, Molecular Psychiatry, the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Biological Psychiatry.

As a Pro Futura Scientia Fellow, Neufeld focuses on the link between synesthesia and mental health conditions, in particular obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Following an extension of her Pro Futura project, she has further expanded her research to examine genetic and environmental contributions to specific types of synesthesia and their link to autism and mental health, as well as the mechanisms underlying sensory over-responsivity in synesthesia and autism, and the role of specific environmental factors.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2026-27.