I am a postdoctoral researcher with a background in experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience and philosophy. Currently, I work in the Sleep & Cognition Group at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. My work focuses on the interplay of insomnia, anxiety and hyperarousal. Hyperarousal is intricately related to poor sleep - tension and worry prior to bedtime prevent us from getting a good night's rest. At the same time, sound sleep is vital for the processing of our worries overnight. As part of my postdoc, I am thinking about the directionality of this relationship. How exactly does daytime anxiety carry into sleepless nights? And which biological mechanisms can explain why restless sleep perpetuates anxious feelings overnight?

Additionally, I am working to understand why women are especially vulnerable to insomnia during reproductive transitions such as pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause. I investigate how changes in mood, stress, and hormones interact with sleep, raising questions about which mechanisms drive chronic insomnia and how early warning signs of mental health problems can be detected. Are you currently struggling with sleep while pregnant or postpartum? Feel free to reach out to l.rosler@nin.knaw.nl to find out more about opportunities to support our research and join our peer-support-network.

Previously, I worked on how the brain processes information during sleep at the University of Cambridge and investigated prediction errors in schizophrenia at the UMC Utrecht. During my PhD at the University of Würzburg, I focused on the behavioural and neural mechanisms underlying attentional shifts to humans in our environment.