Biography
Dr. Koban joined the CRNL as a tenured CNRS researcher and leader of the SOCIALHEALTH team in 2022. She earned her PhD in Neuroscience and Affective Sciences at the University of Geneva (Switzerland), where she used EEG and fMRI to study the brain correlates of social conflict and action monitoring. During her postdoctoral work at the University of Colorado in the US, she used brain imaging to investigate the brain mechanisms underlying social and contextual influences on pain and emotion. During a second postdoc at INSEAD and the Paris Brain Institute (ICM), she became interested in social and gut-microbiome influences on food choices. Before joining the CRNL, she was a permanent CNRS researcher at the Paris Brain Institute (ICM). Dr. Koban has received several fellowships and awards, and her research has been featured in National Geographic Magazine and other international news outlets. In 2021, she has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant to study the brain mechanisms of social context effects of health related decision-making.
Research overview
Human cognition, behavior, and health are strongly influenced by social and cultural factors. Dr. Koban uses brain imaging, psychophysiology, and behavioral measures to study the brain mechanisms that mediate those social influences on behavior and health. In particular, she is interested in how social information (such as other people’s ratings or social feedback) and social relationships modulate the experience of pain, craving, and other affective states. Dr. Koban further uses machine learning in combination with fMRI data to develop brain markers of social and affective states, with the goal to better predict individual differences in behavior and vulnerability to mental and bodily health conditions.
Key publications
Koban, L., Wager, T. D., & Kober, H. (2022). A neuromarker for drug and food craving distinguishes drug users from non-users. Nature Neuroscience, 1-10.
Koban, L., Gianaros, P., Kober, H., & Wager, T. (2021). The self in context: brain systems linking mental and physical health. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 22(5), 309-322.
Plassmann, H., Schelski, D. S., Simon, M. C., & Koban, L. (2021). How we decide what to eat: Toward an interdisciplinary model of gut–brain interactions. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, e1562.
Koban, L., Jepma, M., López-Solà, M., & Wager, T. D. (2019). Different brain networks mediate the effects of social and conditioned expectations on pain. Nature Communications, 10(1), 1-13.
Koban, L., Kross, E., Woo, C. W., Ruzic, L., & Wager, T. D. (2017). Frontal-brainstem pathways mediating placebo effects on social rejection. Journal of Neuroscience, 37(13), 3621-3631.
Koban, L., Schneider, R., Ashar, Y. K., Andrews-Hanna, J. R., Landy, L., Moscovitch, D. A., Wager, T.D., & Arch, J. J. (2017). Social anxiety is characterized by biased learning about performance and the self. Emotion, 17(8), 1144.
See here for a full list of publications.
