Jessica Freiherr

Prof. Dr. Jessica Freiherr serves as a full faculty member of the Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences (GSN) at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and leads the MultiSense research group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Technology and Packaging IVV. Her work bridges academic neuroscience with applied sensory analytics in industrial contexts.

Her research centers on Behavioral & Cognitive Neuroscience with deep specialization in human chemical senses (olfaction, gustation, trigeminal perception). She investigates multisensory integration mechanisms using multimodal stimulation and advanced neuroimaging techniques (EEG/ERP, fMRI), examining how chemosensory stimuli interact with other sensory systems to form unified percepts. Her work spans fundamental neural processing in healthy subjects to clinical applications in psychiatric and neurological patient populations, with particular interest in food-related odors, warning signals, and emotion-communicating body odors.

Analysis of her recent publications reveals consistent focus on multisensory integration dynamics, especially chemosensory-visual/auditory interactions. Her research demonstrates methodological sophistication through graph theoretical network analysis, superadditive/subadditive neural processing models, and cross-modal cognitive load paradigms, establishing significant contributions to understanding cortical odor processing and social chemosignaling.

The MultiSense group under her direction integrates behavioral experiments, psychophysiological measurements, and functional neuroimaging to decode sensory perception mechanisms, with applications spanning food science, clinical diagnostics, and human-computer interaction.