Mareike Grotheer

Leader of the Max Planck Research Group
Lise Meitner Research Group NeuroLearn

Contact:
E-Mail: grotheer@mpib-berlin.mpg.de

 

CV:

Since 2026: Group Leader (tenured), Lise Meitner Research Group Neuroplasticity in Development and Learning, MPI for Human Development, Germany
Since 2026: Guest Professor, Psychology Department, Philipps-University Marburg, Germany
2025-2026: Professor, Psychology Department, Philipps-University Marburg, Germany
2021-2025: Junior Group Leader, Educational Neuroscience Lab, Psychology Department, Philipps-University Marburg, Germany
2019-2020: Postdoc Brain Development and Education Lab, Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, USA 
2016-2020: Postdoc Vision and Perception Neuroscience Lab, Psychology Department, Stanford University, USA 
2012-2016: Dr. phil. (PhD) in Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany
2010-2012: MSc in Neuroscience, University of Regensburg, Germany 
2007-2010: BSc in Biology, University of Göttingen, Germany
 

Research Interests:

Brain Development
Educational Neuroscience
Brain Structure and Function
Brain Plasticity
Myelination
Human Learning
 

Selected Literature:

• Dalski, A., Schulz, A., Klaes, M., Pirsch, M., Meinhardt, M., Ukaj, A., Faßbender, L., González, V. A. A., Cetin, G., de Haas, B., Shing, Y. L., Schwarzer, G., & Grotheer, M. (2026). Preliterate symbolic language processing sets the neural stage for learning to read. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.05.22.726240
• Zika, S., Chang, K., Orhon, A., Kruper, J., Tyagi, C., Yan, X., Tung, S., Grill-Spector, K., Rokem, A., & Grotheer, M. (in press). Cortical and white matter myelination proceed in concert during early infancy. Nature Communications.
• Dalski, A., Kular, H., Jorgensen, J.G., Grill-Spector, K., & Grotheer, M. (2024). Both mOTS-words and pOTS-words prefer emoji stimuli over text stimuli during a reading task. Cerebral Cortex, 34(8).
• Grotheer, M., Bloom, D., Kruper, J., Richie-Halford, A., Zika, S., Aguilera González, V. A., Yeatman, J. D., Grill-Spector, K., & Rokem, A. (2023). Human white matter myelinates faster in utero than ex utero. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(33), e2303491120.
• Grotheer, M., Rosenke, M., Wu, H., Kular, H., Querdasi, F.R., Natu, V., Yeatman, J., & Grill-Spector, K. (2022). White matter myelination during early infancy is linked to spatial gradients and myelin content at birth. Nature Communications, 13, 997.
• Grotheer, M., Zhen, Z., Lerma-Usabiaga, G., & Grill-Spector, K. (2019). Separate lanes for adding and reading in the white matter highways of the human brain. Nature Communications, 10(1), 3675.