BIFOLD co-director Prof. Dr. Klaus-Robert Müller, has been honored by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) with the Neural Network Pioneer Award 2026. The award recognizes his “contributions to the theory and practice of kernel-based learning.” Kernel-based learning is a key method in machine learning that identifies patterns in data using special mathematical functions.

A team at the Technical University of Munich’s TUM University Hospital has implanted a brain-computer interface in a patient paralyzed from the neck down. The five-hour procedure was the first of its kind performed in Europe. The device enables research that could one day help restore independence and improve quality of life for patients. In particular, the scientists hope to enable the 25-year-old patient to control his smartphone and a robotic arm using only his thoughts.

Biological brains are extremely energy-efficient. Can artificial intelligence learn a few tricks from them? Researchers at FIAS and colleagues from France describe new findings on energy-efficient information processing in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers at Chemnitz University of Technology explore human-robot conversations – and share their insights in a podcast episode.

Seeing is more than light hitting the retina — it is the result of a finely tuned interplay between networks of neurons. A new study by researchers at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) and international partners shows how the brain learns to reliably process visual stimuli after the eyes open. With experience, incoming signals become more precise and increasingly aligned with internal circuits — a process that enables stable visual perception. These insights could inform advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and therapeutic approaches.

Dr Oliver Barnstedt and Dr Anggi Hapsari each receive an ERC Starting Grant.

Flies too need their sleep. In order to be able to react to dangers, however, they must not completely phase out the environment. Researchers at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now deciphered how the animal's brain produces this state. As they describe in the journal Nature*, the fly brain filters out visual information rhythmically during sleep – so that strong visual stimuli could still wake the animal up.

A simulated child and a domestic environment like in a computer game: these are the research foundations of the group led by Prof. Jochen Triesch at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS). It uses computer models to find out how we learn to see and understand—and how this could help improve machine learning.

Large language models (LLMs) from the field of artificial intelligence can predict how the human brain responds to visual stimuli. This is shown in a new study published in Nature Machine Intelligence by Professor Adrien Doerig (Freie Universität Berlin) together with colleagues from Osnabrück University, University of Minnesota, and Université de Montréal, titled “High-Level Visual Representations in the Human Brain Are Aligned with Large Language Models.” For the study, the team of scientists used LLMs similar to those behind ChatGPT.

Sara A. Solla receives this year’s Valentin Braitenberg Award for Computational Neuroscience for her “outstanding contributions to computational neuroscience over decades” (the award committee). The award ceremony will take place during the Bernstein Conference on September 30, 2025, in Frankfurt am Main.