Annegret Falkner, PhD

Annegret Falkner is an assistant professor of neuroscience at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. She earned her PhD from Columbia University, and her research focuses on neural circuits for social decision-making. Her lab is interested in how social experience and internal state shapes sensory perception and social motivation in order to influence behavioral choice. Specifically, it focuses on understanding the interplay between circuit nodes in the brain’s “social decision-making network,” areas in the hypothalamus, amygdala, and midbrain that process social-sensory information and drive social behaviors. Her lab uses genetic tools in mice in tandem with in vivo physiology and optical recording strategies to probe how activity in these networks changes as a function of experience and neuromodulatory and hormonal influences.