Sonja Kotz MSc, PhD

Sonja A. Kotz is a cognitive, affective, and translational neuroscientist. She investigates the role of prediction in multimodal domains (perception, action, speech, music) in healthy, neurological, and psychiatric populations using behavioral and modern neuroimaging techniques (E/MEG, s/fMRI, TMS) as well as computational modeling. More recently, she has also taken up comparative research on timing and rhythm capacities in several animal species.

Sonja holds a Chair in Translational Cognitive Neuroscience at Maastricht University and multiple honorary Professorships (Manchester, UK; Leipzig, Germany; Lisbon, Portugal) and works on the boards of several European research centers, international and national funding agencies, and editorial boards in her fields of research. She just finished her Presidency of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language.

For over 20 years, her research has been devoted to three core topics: the domain specificity and/or domain generality of music, speech, and prosody processing, the impact of music and social interaction on learning, and the impact of music in the rehabilitation of movement and speech/language disorders.