Arno Villringer (born 1958, Schopfheim, Germany) is a Director at the Department of Neurology [1] at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences[2] in Leipzig, Germany; Director of the Department of Cognitive Neurology at University of Leipzig Medical Center;[3] and Academic Director of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain [4] and the Mind&Brain Institute,[5] Berlin.
From July 2022 to June 2025 he is the Chairperson of the Human Sciences Section of the Max Planck Society.
After a fellowship at the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital at Harvard Medical School in 1985, he worked in Munich, Germany, becoming a board certified neurologist in 1992, and gaining his professorial degree (Habilitation) at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1994.
[7] Arno Villringer is the author of more than 600 academic articles (as of 2022) with more than >56000 citations, and an h-index of 116 (Google Scholar, August 2022) [8] Arno Villringer pioneered magnetic resonance perfusion imaging of the brain by demonstrating that susceptibility contrast agents such as GdDTPA may be employed in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
[9] The susceptibility-based contrast mechanism later became relevant for the Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) signal in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).