researcher
Karolina Finc
I am a cognitive scientist specializing in network neuroscience. My research focuses on the dynamics of network reorganization over time—I analyze how large-scale brain networks adapt and restructure in response to learning, training, and changing environmental demands. I am interested in how cognitive functions and states emerge from interactions within distributed neural systems and how brain-body interactions modulate these dynamic processes. I also study the psychophysiology of stress and trauma, investigating how stress mechanisms affect adaptive capacity at the individual and collective levels.
In the EUROpest project, I bring a cognitive and systemic perspective to research on epidemics in late medieval and early modern Europe. I analyze how interacting factors—epidemiological, climatic, economic, social, and psychological—shape the dynamics of socio-economic systems over the long term. Using network approaches, I examine the mechanisms of reorganization of such systems under the influence of cumulative stress and identify adaptive and maladaptive patterns emerging in crisis conditions.
