Ingrid Johnsrude facts for kids

Ingrid Suzanne Johnsrude is a Canadian neuroscientist, born in 1967. A neuroscientist is a scientist who studies the brain and the nervous system. She is a professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario. Her work focuses on how our brains understand language and how the brain's structure affects our ability to speak and understand. She also researches how to find signs of brain diseases in older people.

Early Life and Education

Ingrid Johnsrude was born in 1967 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her family was in the military, so she moved to different places when she was a child. She eventually settled in Kingston, Ontario, for her last year of high school.

After high school, she went to Queen's University at Kingston to earn her first degree. Later, she continued her studies at McGill University, where she earned both her Master of Science degree and her PhD. She completed her PhD research under the guidance of a famous scientist named Brenda Milner.

Exploring the Brain and Language

After finishing her studies, Dr. Johnsrude spent seven years working in England. While there, she and her team did some interesting research. They found that London taxicab drivers had a part of their brain called the hippocampus that was more developed. The hippocampus is important for memory and navigation. This research even earned them an Ig Nobel Prize, which celebrates unusual and imaginative scientific achievements.

In 2002, Dr. Johnsrude was invited to return to Canada as a professor at Queen's University. She became a Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience in 2003. This special funding helped her study how human brains make sense of all the sounds we hear from other people, turning them into meaningful sentences.

Her research team started using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to look at how the brain processes speech, especially when it's hard to hear or understand. An MRI is a machine that uses strong magnets and radio waves to create detailed pictures of the inside of the body, including the brain. In 2009, she received another important award, the E.W.R. Steacie Fellowship, and continued her work as a Canada Research Chair.

Moving to Western University

In 2014, Dr. Johnsrude moved from Queen's University to the University of Western Ontario (UWO). There, she became a Western Research Chair in both the Faculty of Social Science and the Faculty of Health Sciences.

In 2019, she was appointed the director of Western's Brain and Mind Institute. This institute is a place where scientists study how the brain works. In 2021, Dr. Johnsrude was recognized for her important work by being elected a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. This honor recognized her significant contributions to understanding how our brains are organized to hear and understand speech and language.