معرفی
Koen Nelissen is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine, KU Leuven, Belgium, affiliated with the Department of Neuroscience and the Laboratory for Neuro- and Psychophysiology. He is also a member of the LBI-KU Leuven Brain Institute and serves on the Faculty Council of Medicine and the Departmental Council of Neurosciences.
Research Focus: His research centers on systems neuroscience in non-human primates, particularly the neural mechanisms underlying action observation, social cognition, and the functional organization of cortical areas such as the insula and the mirror neuron system. Using advanced fMRI techniques in macaque monkeys, he investigates how the brain processes and learns from actions in social contexts.
Recent Projects: Nelissen leads or co-leads several high-impact projects, including:
- Causal role of social brain networks during real-life social interactions (2023–2026)
- Perceptual Learning from Actions in Non-human Primates (2021–2025)
- Dynamics of plasticity in the adult brain (2021–2025)
- Functional organization of the macaque insula (2019–2024)
- Role of prefrontal cortex and amygdala in social cognition and reward-based learning (2018–2025)
Publications: His scholarly output includes over 70 peer-reviewed articles, with recent work appearing in NeuroImage, Brain Sciences, and Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience. These studies collectively advance our understanding of how the primate brain supports social interaction, learning, and sensorimotor integration.
Advising & Collaboration: Nelissen supervises doctoral students such as Laurens Sypré, Ding Cui, and Shivangi Sharma, and collaborates within the KU Leuven Brain Institute and international primate neurobiology networks.
Laboratory: He heads research activities at the Laboratory for Neuro- and Psychophysiology, located at ON2 Herestraat 49, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
