Arno Villringer

Arno Villringer (born 1958, Schopfheim, Germany) is a Director at the Department of Neurology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany; Director of the Department of Cognitive Neurology at University of Leipzig Medical Center; and Academic Director of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and the Mind&Brain Institute, Berlin.

He holds a full professorship at University of Leipzig and an honorary professorship at Charité, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

From July 2022 to June 2025 he is the Chairperson of the Human Sciences Section of the Max Planck Society.

Arno Villringer studied medicine at the University of Freiburg (German: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg) from 1977 to 1984, graduating with a Doctor of Medicine (summa cum laude) higher degree in 1984.

After a fellowship at the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital at Harvard Medical School in 1985, he worked in Munich, Germany, becoming a board certified neurologist in 1992, and gaining his professorial degree (Habilitation) at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1994.

Physiology empowered brain imaging: Since 1992 his research focus has been on neurophysiological mechanisms underlying brain function and plasticity, using multi-modal brain imaging, e.g., signatures of neuronal inhibition in functional brain imaging, combined fNIRS/fMRI to establish relationship between BOLD and deoxy-Hb concentration in fMRI, combined EEG/fMRI to show fMRI correlates of background rhythms and simultaneously assess neuronal spiking and fMRI.

Villringer currently pursues the hypothesis that (maladaptive) brain plasticity is crucial for the development of vascular risk factors leading to stroke and for the (lack of) recovery after stroke, and that brain plasticity can be beneficially modified.

For this purpose, he employs multi-modal brain imaging to understand basic neurophysiological mechanisms underlying human brain plasticity in cortical and subcortical brain areas, and their interaction.

Behavioral correlates include sensorimotor function, reaction to stress, and emotions.

The clinical applications are (i) prevention of vascular risk factors (obesity, hypertension) and subsequent stroke, and (ii) recovery after stroke.

Sources:

From 1993 to 2007, he worked at the Department of Neurology at the Charité, Berlin, first as a consultant, and later as head of the Department of Neurology at the Benjamin Franklin Campus.

In 1993, Villringer showed feasibility of noninvasive functional near-infrared spectroscopy and imaging (fNIRS, fNIRI) of the human brain followed by > 50 publications establishing /validating fNIRS.

Since 2006 he has been Academic Director of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and the Mind&Brain institute (since 2010), since 2007 he has been Director of the Department of Neurology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and director of the Department of Cognitive Neurology at the University of Leipzig Medical Center.

Arno Villringer is the author of more than 600 academic articles (as of 2022) with more than >56000 citations, and an h-index of 116 (Google Scholar, August 2022)

Arno Villringer pioneered magnetic resonance perfusion imaging of the brain by demonstrating that susceptibility contrast agents such as GdDTPA may be employed in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

The susceptibility-based contrast mechanism later became relevant for the Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) signal in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).