
Monika Schönauer is a Germany based sleep and memory researcher. Together with her team, she studies how memory reactivation contributes to forming lasting memories.
Monika Schönauer, PhD
Prof. Dr. Monika Schönauer is Chair of Neuropsychology at the University of Freiburg (W1 Tenure Track W3 professorship) and head of the Emmy Noether Research Group “The Developing Engram – Imaging Memory Consolidation in Wakefulness and Sleep.”
She is an expert in sleep and memory research. Her main research interest lies in how we form stable long-term memory. To answer this question, she employs functional brain imaging and imaging of experience-dependent microstructural plasticity in the human brain.
Her innovative work on rapid consolidation in wakefulness and sleep, as well as demonstrating offline memory processing during human sleep, has earned her multiple awards, including the Early Career Award of the German Psychological Association and the Leopoldina Young Investigator Award of the Leopoldina German National Academy of Sciences.
Research Interests
systems memory consolidation
neural plasticity
memory reactivation
sleep
Research Experience
Assistant Professor and Chair of Neuropsychology at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (since February 2020)
Head of the Emmy Noether Research Group “The Developing Engram – Imaging Memory Consolidation in Wakefulness and Sleep.”
(since August 2020)
Research Fellow at the Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University
(June 2018 – December 2019)
Working in the Princeton Computational Memory Lab under Prof. Ken Norman.
Margarete von Wrangell Fellow at the Institute for Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen
(January 2018 – January 2020)
Post-doctoral position at the Institute for Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen
(October 2014 – December 2017)
PhD in Systemic Neurosciences at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
(October 2011 – December 2014)