Bernstein members involved: Ad Aertsen, Stefan Rotter

The Bernstein-CorTec Prize honors outstanding scientific achievements in doctoral and master’s theses in the field of computational neuroscience and neurotechnology. The prize is awarded annually, alternating between doctoral and master’s theses. In the year 2024, the prize is awarded to doctoral theses.

The two award-winning doctoral theses deal with the following topics:

Enya Paschen: Mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) is the most common focal epilepsy in adults. Despite advances in pharmacological, surgical and neuromodulatory treatment strategies, many patients do not achieve adequate control of their epileptic seizures. Enya Paschen’s dissertation focussed on the development of new neuromodulation techniques and their effects on seizure activity and cognitive functions in MTLE. She found that low-frequency stimulation (LFS, optogeneric or electrical) in the hippocampus suppresses seizure onset and does not impair core hippocampal functions such as learning, spatial navigation and memory. She was thus able to present LFS as an effective stimulation protocol and an alternative therapeutic approach for treatment-resistant MTLE patients.

Eric Klein: His thesis describes the first functional optical cochlear implant (oCI) based on integrated μLEDs successfully applied in vivo. In order to integrate the highest possible number of individually addressable μLEDs, he evaluated different routing schemes, implementing single- and multi-layer metallization. Based on conclusions drawn during the intense evaluation of the first oCI generation (oCI-1), a new single layer interconnection approach was developed, characterized, and found to be more efficient than the commonly used multi-layer based multiplexing scheme for LED arrays. Based on in vivo tests performed in cooperation with project partners, he concluded that a single μLED is capable of efficiently stimulating optogenetically modified nerve cells in the cochlea. It was further demonstrated that the μLED arrays of the oCIs reduce the spectral spread, compared to a clinical style electrical cochlear implant, by up to 5 octaves, thereby providing much higher frequency resolution to the cochlear implant patients.

Enya Paschen works now as Behavioural Pharmacology & EEG Team Leader with Ulysses Neuroscience Limited, a private Irish Research and Development Organisation. Eric Klein is now pursuing his scientific interests as a postdoc in the Inst. for Microystems Engineering (IMTEK) at the University of Freiburg.

Award Lectures

Both awardees will present their research in an Extra Bernstein Seminar on January 14 at 17:15 hours in the Bernstein Center Freiburg.