Catherine Kerr (neuroscientist) facts for kids

Catherine Kerr was a smart scientist and professor who studied how our minds and bodies work together. She was an Assistant Professor of medicine and family medicine at Brown University. She also led the Translational Neuroscience program there until 2016.

Catherine Kerr went to Amherst College for her first degree. Later, she earned her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. After that, she worked at Harvard Medical School. There, she received an award from the NIH. This award helped her research how meditation affects the brain. In 2011, she joined Brown University to continue her important work.

What She Studied

Catherine Kerr's main research looked at how body-based attention practices affect our brains. These practices include things like Tai Chi and mindfulness. She wanted to understand how these activities change the brain and nervous system.

Her lab focused on how our senses and movements connect to the brain's outer layer, called the cortex. She believed these connections were key to how practices like mindfulness help us.

Catherine Kerr's work was also shared with many people. She was featured in magazines like Forbes and newspapers like The New York Times. She even gave a TED Talk about how mindfulness affects the brain.

She received grants to support her research. One grant from the NIH helped her study how mindfulness training could help people manage asthma symptoms.

Some of her other important work included:

• Studying how mindfulness meditation affects brain maps in people with long-term pain. This research was supported by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) / NIH.
• Writing about how mindfulness starts with paying attention to your body. This was published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
• Exploring the idea of "equanimity" (a calm and balanced mind) as a goal in meditation research. This was published in the journal Mindfulness.