Recognizing words is the basis of understanding the meaning of a text. When we read, we move our eyes very efficiently and fast from word to word. Generally, this flow is only interrupted when we encounter an unfamiliar word. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), an international team of scientists at the University of Vienna and Goethe University Frankfurt discovered that the distinction of familiar words and unfamiliar strings of characters, in the sense of a filtering process, also serves well as a model for the patterns of brain activity which are observed during reading. This filter is located in the lower left temporal lobe, a brain area which is important for the visual word recognition. These results were recently published in PLOS Computational Biology.

Three European collaborative projects and one comprehensive infrastructure project, all of which are to be led by researchers from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH), have been given the go-ahead by the EU Commission. Charité researchers will also be involved in two further projects which are due to be launched. The new Charité-led projects will address mental health issues, an innovative cell therapy, prognosis after stroke, and virtual models of the brain. Charité will receive appropriately € 7 million in funding for this research. The EU’s framework program for research and innovation is the largest single-source funding program in the world.

Researchers have succeeded in identifying a network in the brain of mice that plays an important role in learning expectations and is remarkably similar to the network in the human brain.