In 2004, during the final year of her psychology degree at the University of Liège, Christina Schmidt carried out a training programme at the Cyclotron Research Centre (CRC). There she became aware of the questions around sleep and circadian rhythms.

Within the context of her doctoral thesis, the subject of which is the influence of sleep pressure, circadian rhythms, the chronotype and age on cognitive performances, she had the opportunity to carry out another training programme in 2005, this time at the University of Basel’s Centre for Chronobiology, managed by Professor Christian Cajochen. She stayed in Switzerland for a year and a half before returning to Belgium and the University of Liège’s CRC with the status of a FNRS Research Fellow.

Christina Schmidt is the principal author or co-author of around a dozen articles published in journals with international reputations, including recently ‘Homeostatic Sleep Pressure and Responses to Sustained Attention in the Suprachiasmatic Area’, in _Science_.

Selection of publications

Schmidt C., Collette F., Leclercq Y., Sterpenich V., Vandewalle G., Berthomier P., Berthomier C., Philipps C., Tinguely G., Darsaud A., Gais S., Schabus M., Desseilles M., DangVu T., Salmon E., Balteau E., Degueldre C., Luxen A., Maquet P., Cajochen C., & Peigneux P. (2009). Homeostatic Sleep Pressure and Responses to Sustained Attention in the Suprachiasmatic Area. /Science 324,/ 516.

Schmidt C., Collette F., Cajochen C., & Peigneux P. (2007). A time to think: circadian rhythms in human cognition. /Cogn Neuropsychol, 24/(7), 755-789.

Vandewalle G., Schmidt C., Albouy G., Sterpenich V., Darsaud A., Rauchs G., et al. (2007). Brain responses to violet, blue, and green monochromatic light exposures in humans: prominent role of blue light and the brainstem. /PLoS ONE, 2/(11), e1247.

Schmidt C., Peigneux P., Muto V., Schenkel M., Knoblauch V., Munch M., et al. (2006). Encoding difficulty promotes postlearning changes in sleep spindle activity during napping. /J Neurosci, 26/(35), 8976-8982.