Principal Investigator

Kalina Christoff is a Professor of Psychology and Interim Director of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia. Prof. Christoff is an expert on the cognitive neuroscience of human thought, from spontaneous thought phenomena such as mind-wandering, daydreaming, and creativity; to goal-directed thought, including deliberate reasoning and problem-solving; to clinical alterations in thought and their implications for human wellbeing. Her work also examines the neurocognitive mechanism of introspection, meta-cognition, meditation, and different forms of self-experience and self-regulation. Prof. Christoff’s research seeks to understand these mental phenomena through the dynamic interplay between large-scale brain systems, including the default, salience, and frontoparietal control networks.