Changing between slow and fast integration of information, the brain can flexibly modulate the timescales on which it operates. This is the result of a new study by an international team of researchers, now published in the journal Nature Communications. Their analysis of experimental data from the visual cortex and their computer simulations also provide an explanation for how different timescales can arise and how they can change: the structure of the neural networks determines how fast or slow information is integrated.

Human Frontier Science Program funds research project coordinated in Göttingen.

Information transfer in the brain relies on the activation of functional neuronal chains that are embedded within a highly recurrent network. Obviously, neuronal activity should neither fade along the chain nor expand uncontrollably activating contextually irrelevant regions of the network, both entailing a loss of information. It has been proposed therefore that the brain must operate near a critical point of a phase transition between fading and explosive neuronal activity dynamics. Considered as a branching process, active individual neurons should then, on average, activate exactly one further neuron during activity cascades that have been termed neuronal avalanches. Put into a simple phrase: "Fire a neuron – Hire a neuron".

Neuroscientists at the University of Zurich have developed innovative objectives for light microscopy by using mirrors to produce images. Their design finds correspondence in mirror telescopes used in astronomy on the one hand and the eyes of scallops on the other. The new objectives enable high-resolution imaging of tissues and organs in a much wider variety of immersion media than with conventional microscope lenses.

Innovative and unique worldwide: researchers from UMG and the University of Göttingen are developing a mobile examination laboratory for decoding early childhood development.

Human beings are bilaterally symmetrical. As such, our brains are made of two halves called hemispheres, that communicate with each other with specialized fiber tracts running across the midline. While each hemisphere tends to deal with the senses (vision, hearing, touch) and motor control of the opposite side of the body, we are generally not aware of this partitioning of function, thanks to constant inter-hemispheric communication. In humans, the two hemispheres are also specialized for certain functions: language areas, for example, are typically in the left hemisphere.

Humans and monkeys coordinate conflicting interest to maximize their profits

Learning, remembering something, and recalling memories is supported by multiple separate groups of neurons connected inside and across key regions in the brain. If these neural assemblies fail to sync together at the right time, the memories are lost, a new study led by the universities of Bristol and Heidelberg has found.

A sense of fairness has long been considered purely human – but animals also react with frustration when they are treated unequally by a person. For instance, a well-known video shows monkeys throwing the offered cucumber at their trainer when a conspecific receives sweet grapes as a reward for the same task. Meanwhile, researchers have observed similarly frustrated reactions to unfair rewards in wolves, rats and crows. However, researchers still debate the reasons for this behavior: Does the frustration really stem from a dislike of unequal treatment, or is there another explanation? In a study with long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis), researchers at the German Primate Center – Leibniz Institute for Primate Research (DPZ) have now confirmed an alternative explanatory approach in a collaborative project involving the Departments of Cognitive Ethology and Neurobiology.

TV tip: Prof. Dr. Florian Röhrbein is an expert in neurorobotics and artificial intelligence at TU Chemnitz - On March 9, 2023, he will participate in the MDR program "Voss & Team" and contribute his expertise to a test.