2018 CSBBCS Vincent Di Lollo Early-Career Researcher Award Winner: Dr. Nathan Spreng

Dr. Nathan Spreng received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Toronto in 2008. After a one year post-doctoral fellowship at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, he took up a fellowship at Harvard University in the Department of Psychology. In 2012, He established the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition as an Assistant Professor at Cornell University. In 2017, Dr. Spreng returned to Canada as an Associate Professor at McGill University and a research scientist at the Montreal Neurological Institute. 

Dr. Spreng’s research examines large-scale brain network dynamics and their role in cognition. Currently, his lab investigates attention, memory, cognitive control, and social cognition, and the interacting brain networks that support them. He is also actively involved in the development and implementation of multivariate and network-based statistical approaches to assess brain structure and function, with an emphasis on large-scale network dynamics and interactivity. In doing so, he aims to better understand the properties of brain networks underlying cognition, as they change across the lifespan in health and disease.

For his work in cognitive network neuroscience, Dr. Spreng was recognized as a “Rising Star” by the Association for Psychological Science. He has published over 65 peer-reviewed articles. One of his earliest papers continues to be among the highest cited in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience and his recent work with colleagues from the University of British Columbia was cited as the best paper for 2015 in the journal Neuroimage. His research program is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, as well as the National Institutes of Aging, the Alzheimer's Association, and the Elder Justice Foundation in the U.S.