Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will continue his “Werkstatt des Wandels” series in Baden-Württemberg on November 15. There he will visit the final of the Bundeswettbewerbs Künstliche Intelligenz (BWKI) in Tübingen and Robert Bosch GmbH in Renningen. The focus will be on the importance of AI applications and digital infrastructure for the international competitiveness of Germany and Europe.

Researchers from LMU, TU Berlin, and Charité have developed a new AI tool that uses imaging data to also detect less frequent diseases of the gastrointestinal tract.

Susanne Schreiber, Professor of Theoretical Neurophysiology at the Institute of Biology at Humboldt University and Chair of the Bernstein Network, has been appointed to the German Ethics Council for a second term of office.

Researchers at the German Primate Center – Leibniz Institute for Primate Research in Göttingen have developed a novel training protocol for brain-computer interfaces in a study with rhesus monkeys. The method enables precise control of prosthetic hands using signals from the brain alone. For the first time, researchers were able to show that the neural signals that control the different hand postures in the brain are primarily important for this control, and not, as previously assumed, signals that control the movement’s velocity. The results are essential for improving the fine control of neural hand prostheses, which could give paralyzed patients back some or all of their mobility (Neuron).

Prof. Kerstin Krieglstein, Rector of the University of Freiburg, awarded the Bernstein-CorTec Prize for Computational Neuroscience and Neurotechnology to two young researchers, Enya Paschen and Eric Klein, on the morning of 16 October.

This year's Attempto Prizes from the Tübingen Attempto Foundation go to Matthias Baumann for his work on the role of the superior colliculus brain region in the integration of visual information into motor signals to control rapid eye movements and to Roxana Zeraati for her publication on the processing of visual information in the brain on different time scales. The prizes are endowed with 5,000 euros each and were presented during the Dies Universitatis ceremony at the University of Tübingen on October 16, 2024 in the Alte Aula.

Imagine a child visiting a farm and seeing sheep and goats for the first time. Their parent points out which is what, helping the child learn to distinguish between the two. But what happens when the child would not have that guidance on a returning visit? Will they still be able to tell them apart? Neuroscientist Franziska Bröker is studying how both humans and machines learn without supervision — like a child on their own — and has uncovered a puzzle: unsupervised learning can either help or hinder progress, depending on certain conditions.

Slowed movement, trembling, stiff muscles: symptoms that are typical of Parkinson's disease. The loss of the neurotransmitter dopamine, also known as the happiness hormone, which contributes to the transmission of brain signals, is responsible. In the treatment of Parkinson's, it is replaced with medication, often accompanied by side effects. Using deep brain stimulation, electrical impulses can mimic the effect of dopamine, as researchers at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now been able to show. In the scientific journal Brain, they describe the influence of the neurotransmitter on brain networks that transmit the intention of a movement. The aim is to further develop deep brain stimulation.

Mainz research team decodes neuronal circuits and mechanisms that enable stable vision of contrasts even in rapidly changing light conditions.

This year’s two Nobel Laureates in Physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning. John Hopfield created an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data. Geoffrey Hinton invented a method that can autonomously find properties in data, and so perform tasks such as identifying specific elements in pictures.