Research News
Growing and moving
How interactions between neuronal migration and outgrowth shape network architecture
Rats play hide and seek
All around the world children play hide and seek. But do animals do so too? In a recent study, scientists from the Bernstein Center Computational Neuroscience (BCCN) Berlin and the Humboldt University Berlin show that rats can quickly learn a rat-human version of the game and can easily switch between different roles – hiding and searching. The scientists suspect that hide and seek has its origins much earlier in evolution than previously thought.
Can you hear what I say?
Neuroscientists at TU Dresden were able to prove that speech recognition in humans begins in the sensory pathways from the ear to the cerebral cortex and not, as previously assumed, exclusively in the cerebral cortex itself.
Perception Control: How the Brain’s "Colliculum Superior" Helps to Thread a Needle
Researchers at the Hertie Institute in Tübingen attribute greater function to the area in the brainstem than previously assumed
Simulating the effect of transcranial brain stimulation
The long-lasting aftereffects of non-invasive transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) promise an alleviation of severe symptoms of diseases like depressive disorder or chronic pain. In a new modeling study, researchers from the Bernstein Center Freiburg suggest that the aftereffects observed in experiments may be a consequence of homeostatic network growth. Their model is based on the idea that the stimulation triggers a rearrangement of synaptic couplings among stimulated and unstimulated neurons, eventually leading to network remodeling and cell assembly formation.
Hidden Dynamics Detected in Neuronal Networks
Neuronal networks in the brain can process information particularly well when they are close to a critical point – or so brain researchers had assumed based on theoretical considerations. However, experimental investigations of brain activity revealed much fewer indicators of such critical states than expected. Scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen University have now proposed a possible explanation. They showed that neuronal networks can assume a second, previously unknown critical mode whose hidden dynamics are almost impossible to measure with conventional methods.
The scientific case for brain simulations
HBP scientists argue for brain simulators as “mathematical observatories” for neuroscience
Hearing the light: how artificial hearing could become more natural
Researchers at the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) and the German Primate Center – Leibniz Institute for Primate Research (DPZ) are demonstrating improved frequency resolution of artificial hearing using optical stimulation of the inner ear.
Sleep frees up the hippocampus for new memories
University of Tübingen research team demonstrates how the neocortex works as a long-term storage unit