Daniela Schiller facts for kids

Daniela Schiller is a smart scientist who studies the brain. She was born in Israel on October 26, 1972. She leads a special lab at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine where she studies how our feelings and memories work. Dr. Schiller is famous for her work on how memories can be changed, especially emotional ones.

Early Life and Learning

Daniela Schiller grew up in Rishon LeZion, Israel. Her mother was from Morocco, and her father was from Ukraine. Her father, Sigmund Schiller, survived the Holocaust. Daniela is the youngest of four children.

She loved learning and earned a bachelor's degree in psychology (the study of the mind) and philosophy (the study of big ideas) in 1996. Later, in 2004, she got her doctorate degree in psychobiology from Tel Aviv University. This means she studied how the brain and body work together.

After that, she received a special scholarship called a Fulbright fellowship. This allowed her to work with other famous scientists, Elizabeth A. Phelps and Joseph E. LeDoux, at New York University. Besides her science work, Dr. Schiller also plays the drums and sings in music groups called The Amygdaloids and Supersmall.

Awards and Special Recognition

Dr. Schiller has received many awards for her important work:

• 2014 Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in Neuroscience
• 2013 Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow, National Academy of Sciences
• 2010 Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists
• 2005 Fulbright Scholar

Amazing Brain Research

Dr. Schiller's main goal is to understand how our brains can change strong feelings and memories. She wants to find out how we can adjust our emotional and social behavior to fit new situations.

How We Learn and Change Fear

One part of Dr. Schiller's research looks at how we learn about fear and how we can change those fears. She uses a special game where people learn to connect a neutral thing (like a sound) with something scary. Then, they have to change what they learned when the scary thing is connected to something else.

Her studies showed that parts of the brain, like the amygdala and the striatum, change their activity as people learn and adapt. Another brain area, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), also helps. It shows stronger responses to things that are safe.

Dr. Schiller also studied how different ways of dealing with fear, like "extinction" (learning that something is no longer scary) or "reversal" (changing what you learned), use similar brain systems. This research helps us understand how people, including combat veterans, learn and update their understanding of scary situations.

Changing Memories: Reconsolidation

Dr. Schiller's research also focuses on something called memory reconsolidation. This is a cool process where a memory, after it's brought back to mind, becomes a bit "unstable" for a short time. During this unstable period, the memory can be changed or updated before it becomes "stable" again.

Her team showed that it's possible to change scary memories in people. For example, if someone remembers something scary, and then immediately learns something new and safe, it can interfere with the scary memory becoming stable again. This can make the scary memory less strong.

This idea has been tested in many ways, including with mice, rats, and even young people. It has also been used to help people with real-life problems, like those trying to stop smoking or people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or phobias (strong fears). Some types of therapy are even built on these ideas to help people update their difficult memories.

The Power of Imagination

Dr. Schiller's research also explores how our imagination can affect our brains and feelings. She found that when people imagine doing something, the same brain areas that control actual movement become active.

Another exciting discovery was that people could reduce their fear responses just by imagining the things they were afraid of. When they did this, the same brain areas that are active during real-life fear extinction (like the amygdala) were also active. This suggests that our minds have a powerful ability to help us overcome fears, even without facing them directly.

How We Understand Social Connections

Dr. Schiller's team also studies how our brains understand social relationships. They found that when we meet new people and form first impressions, brain areas involved in feelings and judging value become active. These brain responses can even predict how we will feel about someone later on. This suggests that our brains use similar ways to decide if we like a person or a thing.

In another study, her team created a social game where people had to find jobs and homes in an imaginary town by talking to different characters. They discovered that our brains, especially the hippocampus and posterior cingulate cortex, keep track of how people relate to each other in terms of "power" and "friendship." This research helps us understand that the hippocampus, which is known for helping us navigate places, also helps us navigate our social world!