Manfred Spitzer

Manfred Spitzer, born in 1958, is a German psychiatrist and neuroscientist. He studied medicine, psychology and philosophy in Freiburg. From 1990 to 1997, he was a senior physician at Heidelberg University Psychiatric Hospital. He subsequently held the chair of psychiatry at Ulm University until 2025 and directed its psychiatric university hospital. In 2004, he founded the Transfer Centre for Neuroscience and Learning. Guest professorships at Harvard University and a research stay at the University of Oregon shaped his work at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry. Spitzer has published numerous nonfiction books, including Learning, Digital Dementia and Loneliness. For almost ten years, he hosted the television program Geist und Gehirn. His scientific work received, among other distinctions, a 1992 research award from the German Society for Psychiatry and Neurology and the 2002 Cogito Foundation Prize.