Yvonne Brehmer

Yvonne Brehmer is a full professor at Tilburg University, Netherlands. She was leading an independent research group funded for 5 years by the Max Planck Society, Germany. The group was established at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany, in December 2012, is however, physically located at the Aging Research Center (ARC), Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm.

Her research interests include cognitive plasticity and training across the lifespan and neural correlates of age-related cognitive changes. Yvonne’s current research line focuses on inter-individual differences in associative memory in older adults. She investigates why older adults in general seem to have specific difficulties in remembering associative information (such as combining a face and a name). Why are some older adults quite good at remembering associative information while others are not? She is specifically interested in
(a) structural and functional brain correlates,
(b) cognitive, social, and lifestyle factors, and
(c) genetic markers accounting for inter-individual differences in associative memory functioning.

In addition, she is interested in the relation between associative memory and successful aging: Are older adults with good associative memory performance more similar to younger adults regarding their performance and brain structure/function than older adults with clear associative deficits?

Selected publications

Becker, N., Kalpouzos, G., Persson, J., Laukka, E. J., & Brehmer, Y. (2017). Differential effects of encoding instructions on neural correlates of item and associative memory. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29, 545-559.

Papenberg, G., Becker, N., Laukka, E.J., Naveh-Benjamin, M., Bäckman, L., & Brehmer, Y. (2017). Dopamine receptor genes modulate associative memory in old age. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29, 245-253.

Brehmer, Y., Shing, Y. L., Heekeren, H. R., Lindenberger, U., & Bäckman, L. (2016). Training-Induced Changes in Subsequent Memory Effects:  No Major Differences Among Children, Younger Adults, and Older Adults. NeuroImage, 131, 214-225.

Becker, N., Laukka, E. J., Kalpouzos, G., Naveh-Benjamin, M., Bäckman, L., & Brehmer, Y. (2015). Structural brain correlates of associative memory in older adults. NeuroImage, 118, 146-153.

Brehmer, Y., Rieckmann, A., Bellander, M., Westerberg, H., Fischer, H. & Bäckman, L. (2011). Neural correlates of training-related working memory gains in old age. NeuroImage, 58, 1110-1120.

Brehmer, Y., Li, S.-C., Mueller, V., v.Oertzen, T., Lindenberger, U. (2007). Memory plasticity across the life span: Uncovering children’s latent potential. Developmental Psychology, 43, 465-478.