Brigitte C. Kaufmann studied psychology at the Universities of Freiburg and Bern, focusing on clinical psychology and neuropsychology. She then completed her PhD at the Graduate School for Health Sciences at the University of Bern. In her dissertation, she investigated the neural mechanisms underlying a common post‑stroke visuospatial attention deficit: horizontal neglect. Six out of ten right-hemispheric stroke patients show a horizontal neglect and perceive the left side of their environment only to a limited extent. In everyday life this can lead to difficulties such as reading, navigating, or avoiding obstacles.

After completing her PhD, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Paris Brain Institute (ICM) with an SNSF Early Postdoc.Mobility fellowship. There, she broadened her expertise in cognitive neuroscience and expanded her methodological skills, particularly in neuroimaging techniques.

Since March 2026, she has been working at the Faculty of Behavioral Sciences and Psychology at the University of Lucerne. She leads the Ambizione project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, “VERA – Unravelling Vertical Visuospatial Attention to Enhance Post-Stroke Recovery.” While the horizontal dimension of neglect has already been well studied, the vertical dimension of visuospatial attention—orientation upward and downward—has received little research attention, even though it plays a central role in everyday life, for example in recognizing traffic lights, scanning shelves, or climbing stairs. The project combines eye‑movement analyses, magnetic resonance imaging, and non‑invasive brain stimulation to systematically investigate vertical visuospatial attention, its neural correlates, and its relevance for post‑stroke rehabilitation.