Heleen Slagter

Heleen Slagter is a Full Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam), Director of the Institute Brain and Behavior Amsterdam (iBBA), and co-Head of the Department of Cognitive Psychology. She earned her PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Amsterdam (2005) and completed a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, before establishing her own lab in Amsterdam. Her research investigates the neural mechanisms underlying attention, perception, and neuroplasticity, with a focus on how mental training (e.g., meditation) influences cognitive functions.

Key roles include:

• Director of iBBA and co-Head of Cognitive Psychology at VU Amsterdam
• Former President of the Dutch Society for Brain and Cognition (NVP) (2018–2022)
• Associate Editor of Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2020–present)

Research interests span cognitive neuroscience, attention, meditation's effects on the brain, and plasticity of neural mechanisms. Her work has been recognized with prestigious grants, including an ERC Starting Grant (2015), ERC Consolidator Grant (2020), and VIDI grant (2010), along with the Early Career Award from the Society for Psychophysiological Research (2014).

Her lab, the Cognition and Plasticity Lab, explores topics such as conscious perception, distractor inhibition, and the impact of meditation on predictive processing. Supervised PhD theses include studies on neural oscillations and attentional mechanisms. She teaches courses in cognitive neuroscience and supervises research projects in cognitive science.