Dr. Anne Urai

This episode features Caitlin's interview with Anne who studies how sensory information, internal states, and experience influence decision-making behavior.

Dr. Anne Urai discovered her interest in the brain almost entirely by chance. Her love of science, maths, languages and philosophy in high school, and reluctance to choose between them, lead her to pursue a dual major degree in science and humanities as an undergraduate. As a first year at University College Utrecht, Anne found herself placed in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy classes — a fortunate coincidence that would profoundly shape her career in the years that followed. Now an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Leiden University in the Netherlands, Anne reflects that “...if they had randomly assigned me to chemistry and Spanish, I would be doing something very different!” In another life, she thinks she could have enjoyed building on her interest in languages and becoming an interpreter for the EU.