Dr. Heidi Johansen-Berg’s interest in neuroscience was surprisingly realized through philosophy and psychology classes at university, where she indulged her curiosity about human behavior and humanity’s fundamental questions. She eventually moved deeper into experimental psychology and empirical research, entering a Neurosciences Ph.D. program at Oxford University. During her graduate years, she used techniques including fMRI and TMS to better understand the brain regions underlying patients’ successful recovery from stroke. Staying at Oxford for her postdoc, she dove further into studying imaging methods in cognitive neuroscience and fostered fruitful collaborations with mathematicians, engineers, and biologists. Heidi ultimately played a key role in the development of diffusion tractography (DTI), which permits improved non-invasive imaging of physical connections between areas in the living human brain. In her interview with Cristiana, she discusses her abrupt transition from postdoc to PI and how her lab harnesses the capabilities of DTI to uncover the mysteries surrounding white matter and its role in development, disease, and plasticity.

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