How do neighboring neurons in the cerebral cortex communicate with one another during movement? This is the question that Dr. Yangfan Peng is now investigating in his Emmy Noether junior research group at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. His goal is to establish fundamental structure–function principles of neuronal networks in order to deepen our understanding of motor control. The German Research Foundation (DFG) is initially funding the project for three years with € 1.25 million and, following a successful interim evaluation, has indicated the possibility of an additional three-year funding period of approximately 945,000 €.

Following an adverse event, some people develop a stress-related disorder, while others appear to be more resilient. A joint study by the Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research (LIR), University Medicine Halle, and the University Hospital Münster has found that this so-called resilience is not a passive state but is instead subject to active changes in the brain. For the first time, tests on humans and mice have demonstrated that the visual cortex plays a special role in this, revealing a connection between resilience and the improved processing of visual information. It also appears that resilience can be trained. The findings were published in the Science Partner Journal Research.

• Two-year grant to study how humans adapt their decision-making to changing environments.
• Moving beyond artificial experiments to capture more realistic behavior using gamified tasks.
• Potential relevance for disrupted or defective decision-making

Why do some people develop Parkinson’s disease while others remain healthy despite similar circumstances? A new joint research project by the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn, in collaboration with the University of Augsburg, is exploring this question using an unconventional approach: the so-called exposome — that is, the totality of all environmental factors to which a person is exposed over the course of their life, ranging from diet and environmental chemicals to microplastics. The “ExPres-RBD” project is funded by the Walter and Ilse Rose Foundation with over 400,000 euros and is the first to systematically investigate how environmental factors and biological processes in the body interact and may contribute to the development of Parkinson’s disease.

Persons under stress may have a harder time spatially orienting themselves. Researchers in Bochum have discovered why.

Researchers at the Science of Intelligence (SCIoI) Cluster of Excellence are investigating how the brain produces a stable image despite the jerky movements of our eyes. To do this, they use afterimages as an experimental tool.

Neural networks are Alexander van Meegen’s main area of interest. He has been conducting research in this field as a junior professor at RWTH Aachen University since February.

Neurons that control when zebra finches call back fire more strongly when the caller is familiar.

In a German-US collaboration with participation of the European Neuroscience Institute Göttingen (ENI-G), researchers have shown that fruit flies can adapt their social behavior and learn from these experiences. These fundamental mechanisms of social information processing are also important for understanding mental illness. The results have been published in the journal Current Biology. Based on these findings, a follow-up project is being funded by the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation with more than 400,000 Euros over two years.

Research team identifies new selectivity in mouse visual cortex using “digital twins”.