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 post-doctoral training at the University of Reading, UK, and Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, focused on brain correlates of autism spectrum conditions. She developed her own line of research on the link between synesthesia and mental health conditions and was one of the first researchers to publish scientific evidence on the co-occurrence of synesthesia and autism.

Neufeld aims to elucidate the etiologies of both synesthesia and autism and the difficulties and talents linked to these conditions. Applying a twin design allows her to disentangle 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 is collaborating both nationally and internationally with experts from various disciplines (psychiatry, genetics, epidemiology, neuroimaging, and perception). She has published many original research articles on altered 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, with a special focus on obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). An increasingly important focus of her research, which she has developed further during her time as Pro Futura Scientia Fellow, is sensory processing in autism and synesthesia, including both the sensitivity to sensory inputs and differences compared to the general population in how visual stimuli are attended and processed.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2025-26.