• 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.

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”.

How does the brain process the complex flood of visual inputs? A new study at the University of Konstanz on larval zebrafish gives answers, combining behavioural experiments, advanced brain imaging and computational modeling.

A new study by Dresden University of Technology shows that past actions have a greater impact on current decisions than previously assumed, providing new insights into human decision-making. This finding could enhance our understanding of everyday decisions and habits. The results were published in the renowned journal Communications Psychology.

An interdisciplinary team is developing protective measures for brain-computer interfaces and other neurotechnologies.