Simone Kühn: A Pioneering Spirit is Important 

Interview with Simone Kühn on her new Center for Environmental Neuroscience – accompanying interview on YouTube 

October 18, 2024

As of July 2024, Simone Kühn leads the newly founded Environmental Neuroscience research center at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Her goal: to understand how our physical environment influences the brain and mental health. In this interview, she talks about why her research is so relevant in the face of climate change and urbanization, the innovative methods she uses – such as mobile MRI and twin studies – and why it takes a pioneering spirit to delve into this still largely unexplored field. 

Prof. Kühn, you were appointed Max Planck Director last year and have now established the new research center for Environmental Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. What are the key questions you want to investigate? 

Simone Kühn: Our goal is to better understand the effects of the physical environment on people. Neuroscience has to date paid little attention to the context in which people live. In our view, it is increasingly important, especially in a time characterized by climate change and urbanization, that we understand how our mental and neuronal health depends on our living environment. 

How did you come to this research topic? What personal or scientific experiences influenced your choice? 

Simone Kühn: For many years, my research has focused on the question of how our brain changes when we do certain things often, such as smoking, drinking alcohol, eating healthily, exercising regularly, playing video games and solving cognitive tasks. I kept noticing that test subjects usually give up the health-promoting measures we have been examining as soon as the study is over. I therefore asked myself whether our living environments, which are just there, surrounding us, could also have an influence on brain plasticity. If we were to change these environments – for example, in an entire neighborhood – with a view to promoting health, this could have a positive effect on many people. 

How do you want to explore the interaction between our physical environment and our mental health? What specific methods and technologies will you use? 

Simone Kühn: We use a host of different methods. For example, we can analyze geographical data around someone’s home address to find out how many green spaces or streets there are in the immediate vicinity of our test subjects. Thanks to virtual reality (VR), we can fully simulate an environment and therefore control it. This brings many advantages because we can determine individual relevant factors, such as the amount of greenery – but we also send participants on walks in the real environment to investigate the impacts of the environment on people. To capture the effects we are interested in, we focus on three aspects in particular: We investigate changes in brain plasticity such as structure and size using functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This is the method we use most often. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) allows us to measure physiological markers and thus the function of the brain. In addition, we use behavioral experiments such as performance tests to ascertain cognition – for example, we can use them to assess individual perception or evaluate how well people are able to concentrate in different environments.  

In the future, we want to focus more on twin studies, as identical twins offer a particularly excellent opportunity to investigate the effects of the environment while keeping genetic factors constant.

Based on international models, you have created the first German twin registry (GerTRuD). Could you tell us a little more about this exciting project and how it came about? 

Simone Kühn: We are working on a database in which twins, both identical and fraternal, but also triplets and so on, can register to be contacted for scientific studies. We are building this database in collaboration with leading twin researchers in Germany. Thanks to the unique circumstances (identical twins have the same genetic make-up), such studies give us an especially well-controlled insight into the effects of the physical environment on humans. At CEN, we want to find out to what extent the different environments that twins choose after leaving home influence their mental and neuronal health. I find this an enormously exciting project and am very pleased that the database is now underway. We have also just launched a website where we have collected a lot of information about twin research and, of course, about the database itself, where people can find out more and register. 

How do you plan to put the findings from your research into practice? Are there specific projects or initiatives in which you would like to apply your results? 

Simone Kühn: In the long term, we definitely intend to communicate our findings more widely and so influence the design of the built environment and therefore our urban landscapes. At the moment, however, I consider this premature. The field of environmental neuroscience is still very young and we are still looking for the best methods and optimal study designs.   

You are currently in the middle of procuring a mobile MRI device. What are the special features of this technology and what are your plans for it?

Simone Kühn: The great advantage of a mobile MRI device is that you can measure participants in more or less any location. For people like us who are interested in physical environments, it is a real shame if you can only study environments that are within walking distance of the location of the MRI scanner. We want to use the mobile MRI to reach groups that are often difficult to involve in studies, such as the elderly, people living in remote areas and children. The children we typically study at our institute are a very selective sample: first, they usually come from privileged households, which is partly due to our location in Dahlem. Second, not all parents can or want to accompany their children to such studies. For this reason, we would like to use the mobile MRI device on the ground and, for example, run studies directly in daycare centers. Of course, this always requires detailed explanation and the consent of the parents – just as here on site. Another example is inmates: We are currently conducting a study in a prison in Hamburg in which we are interested in the neuronal plasticity processes that occur during a one-year confinement. This study would also be much simpler to carry out if we didn't have to have a police escort bring each of the participants to the MRI.  

How do you see the role of your research in the context of current challenges such as climate change and urbanization? 

Simone Kühn: In my view, there is an urgent need to better understand how our physical environment impacts us, especially in terms of our mental and physical health. While this will not affect the fundamental dynamics of major processes such as climate change or urbanization, it will enable us humans to determine the elements of our physical environment that are particularly important for our well-being. This will allow us to focus on preserving them or incorporating them more strongly into our planning – for example in urban development.     

To what extent can your research contribute to optimizing the design of urban and architectural environments? What practical applications do you expect? 

Simone Kühn: My hope would be that in future we can provide findings that can be used for evidence-based architecture and urban planning. One challenge is that architects naturally also want to realize their own aesthetic ideas in their work and build in a specific planning environment, which is why the health aspect has often not been a priority so far. As part of a DFG network, we have been able to establish contacts with architects who are interested in strengthening impact-based research in the context of architecture. This could be a good start.    

You plan to work closely with the Institute's other research areas. Where do you see thematic overlaps and are there concrete projects already underway? 

I have always had many overlapping interests with the research center for Lifespan Psychology: there are already collaborative projects as part of a study with children on the development of spatial orientation and we have also been closely connected for many years through the Berlin Aging Study (BASE-II). Looking ahead, we will also be able to make very good joint use of the newly emerging research infrastructure at our Max Planck Dahlem Campus of Cognition, which is currently under construction, including the planned wave field audio synthesis laboratory, in which realistic acoustic reproduction of environments can be generated. There have also been exciting projects with the Center for Adaptive Rationality in the past, for example on the topic of metacognition, i.e. how we humans reflect on ourselves and our actions. And we are planning even closer collaboration in the field of virtual realities, for example to better understand our actions in certain environments and contexts. We are expanding our research to include aspects of artificial intelligence through collaborations with the Center for Humans and Machines. The first projects are already underway on the question of whether chatbots can be helpful for lonely people and what positive and negative effects the use of new AI technologies can have on humans. 

You are a passionate and brilliant scientist, a sought-after expert and now also a director. You and your husband are raising three children in Hamburg. How do you organize your daily life between the two cities of Berlin and Hamburg? What strategies have worked for you? 

Simone Kühn: Yes, the fact that our youngest child is just one year old and I was appointed director right at the same time presents us with a special challenge. But I find both greatly enriching. Our daughter accompanies me everywhere at the moment, and when we are in Berlin, she attends the daycare our Institute has a cooperation with. I have the impression that she enjoys her time in Berlin, where she has me all to herself, and that she enjoys spending time with her brothers in Hamburg. Giving my research, which I love and which drives me, enough space in my day-to-day life is sometimes really challenging and only works because I have the opportunity to organize my days here at the Institute on an individual basis. I often work very early in the day or late in the evening. But it's important to me to be clear: I don't expect others to work my hours, they are due to my particular situation. And when a seemingly insurmountable mountain of work piles up in front of me, I try to stay calm, because if there's one thing I've learnt from family life, it's ‘panta rhei’, everything is in flux, everything changes and many things in life are just phases.   

As a successful woman with a family in science, you are a role model. What challenges and opportunities come with this? 

Simone Kühn: I very much hope that by turning up so much and so visibly with my youngest in my new position, I can encourage other parents or those who want to become parents to find their own way of combining family and career. And perhaps prevent a few women from too hastily thinking that they have to give up their scientific career if there are phases in between when they are supposedly less productive. As I said, everything is in flux. 

Your research center is still growing, and you are on the hunt for talented researchers. What qualifications and qualities should applicants have in order to be successful in your team? 

Simone Kühn: We are particularly happy to welcome people who are curious and have the moxie to get involved in a field of research that still barely exists. We work with many unknowns. There are hardly any overview texts, no recognized canon and hardly any community that has agreed on definitions. In this respect, a pioneering spirit is certainly important – after all, we want to go on expeditions with a mobile MRI device – as is the ability to interact with different disciplines (e.g. architecture, geosciences, landscape planning, forestry, computer science) and find this inspiring.   

About Simone Kühn  
Simone Kühn studied psychology at the University of Potsdam. She has long been associated with the Max Planck Society. The neuroscientist was a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. After postdoctoral positions at Ghent University in Belgium, University College London, and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, she led the “Mechanisms and Sequential Progression of Plasticity” group at the Center for Lifespan Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development from 2012 to 2016. She then took a Heisenberg professorship at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE). In 2019, she returned to the Max Planck Institute for Human Development as head of the Lise Meitner Group for Environmental Neuroscience. Since July 2024 she is a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. 

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