IBNS 2027 Keynote Speakers

The Next Wave of Behavioral Neuroscience:  Nassau, The Bahamas - June 21-25, 2027

Inga Neumann was born in Jena, Thuringia, in what was then East Germany, and studied Biology at the former Karl-Marx-University of Leipzig. During her doctoral studies in Leipzig, she began investigating brain neuropeptides, focusing specifically on the stimuli that trigger their central release and their functions within the brain. Following a postdoctoral period at the University of Calgary, Canada, from 1992 to 1994, she worked at the Max-Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich, where she sharpened her research profile and examined the role of oxytocin and vasopressin in stress-related physiology and behaviour. With the support of a Heisenberg stipend from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), she focused on peripartum adaptations of stress responses and the contribution of brain neuropeptides.

In 2001, she was appointed Full Professor of Animal Physiology and Neurobiology at the University of Regensburg, Germany. Since then, her research is focusing on the role of various brain neuropeptides — such as oxytocin, vasopressin, CRF and neuropeptide S — and their neuronal circuits in socio-emotional behaviours under physiological and psychopathological conditions, using relevant rat and mouse models. She is currently particularly interested in the regulation of social fear and the contribution of oxytocin actions within the lateral septum. In this context, she combines complementary methods including pharmacology, epigenetics, chemogenetics, optogenetics, and imaging with behavioural, molecular and histological analyses. From 2006 to 2016, she has directed the International Master Programme "Experimental and Clinical Neuroscience". Between 2017 and 2026, she has been speaker of the DFG-funded Graduate Programme "Neurobiology of Socio-Emotional Dysfunctions". She has published more than 200 papers in international journals with more than 40,000 citations and an h-index of 113. In 2019, she was awarded the ECNP Neuropsychopharmacology Award in Copenhagen.