2020

2020/07/14

Workshop at the 29th Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting 2020

During the Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting 2020 – ECN fellow Alexandra Tzilivaki organizes a workshop entitled: Dissecting the role of interneurons in mnemonic functions using computational modelling approaches."

2020/06/26

Osmotic stress identified as stimulator of cellular waste disposal

Cellular waste disposal, where autophagy and lysosomes interact, performs elementary functions, such as degrading damaged protein molecules, which impair cellular function, and reintroducing the resulting building blocks such as amino acids into the metabolic system. This recycling process is known to keep cells young and, for instance, protects against protein aggregation, which occurs in neurodegenerative diseases. But what, apart from starvation, actually gets this important system going?

2020/06/19

ECN at Research in Germany virtual fair

Meet us at the Research in Germany virtual fair on academic careers in #Germany and learn more about the

ECN and the ECN Fellowship program. Save the date: 07 July 2020!

2020/06/15

Translating academic careers into industry healthcare professions

Though academic institutions have contributed enormously to the remarkable growth in the healthcare industry, a key limiting resource for this continued growth is the creation of career opportunities for doctoral graduates.

2020/06/08

Discovery of important molecular mechanism of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease

Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease is the most common form of inherited neuropathies. A genetic mutation causes the insulating myelin layer of peripheral nerves to become progressively damaged, resulting in severe disabilities in the case of CMT type 4B, for instance. Since the molecular basis is largely unknown, this type of CMT is untreatable and incurable to this day. Now researchers from the Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP) in Berlin, in collaboration with colleagues from Milan, Paris and Mexico, have been able to highlight a new molecular mechanism.

2020/06/08

The Long Night of the Sciences 2020

This year everything is different: Due to the Corona crisis, the Long Night of Sciences 2020 has also been cancelled. Nevertheless, the Long Night of Sciences 2020 has taken place on the radio.

2020/06/03

DFG approves new Transregional Collaborative Research Center for Neuromodulation

Many neurological disorders are associated with impaired movement. Neuromodulation, the targeted electrical stimulation of nerve cells, can help to control altered neuronal network activity. A new Transregional Collaborative Research Center (SFB/Transregio) will now study the nature of the neuromodulation mechanisms which are responsible for a range of conditions.

2020/05/25

Peter Hegemann receives 2020 Shaw Prize

Gero Miesenböck, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel receive the 2020 Prize in Life Science & Medicine!

2020/05/18

New ECN Website Section: Mental Health

Happy to announce our new website section Mental Health in cooperation with Scholar Minds, which is a self-organized-initiative of PhD students at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin trying to provide the Berlin neuroscience community with some relief.

2020/05/06

Scientists decipher further mechanism for memory formation

A research group led by Professor Dietmar Schmitz of Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin has pinpointed the area of the brain involved in transferring memory-associated information into long-term memory. The results have now been published in Nature Communications*.

2020/03/31

Understanding the Formation of Nerve Cell Contacts - Volker Haucke receives 2.5 Million Euros of Funding from the European Research Council (ERC)

Professor Volker Haucke from the Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP) and the Freie Universität Berlin receives a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant of the European Research Council (ERC). The biochemist is granted a total funding of up to 2.5 million euros for a period of five years for his highly innovative research on the assembly of synapses.

2020/03/31

ERC Advanced Grant awarded to project MatCo

The ECN is delighted to congratulate Prof. Dr. Dr. Friedemann Pulvermüller for receving an European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant.

2020/03/31

Limbic encephalitis: autoantibodies trigger overexcitation in the brain

A current research project underway at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), in cooperation with the NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence at Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, suggests that individual antibodies from the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with limbic encephalitis, a certain form of autoimmune encephalitis, increases the excitability of nerve cells. This finding moves us in the direction of a better understanding of the disease. The results have been published in the journal Annals of Neurology* (Ann Neurol 2020; 87: 405-418).

2020/02/24

General Anesthesia Decouples Cortical Pyramidal Neurons

The mystery of general anesthesia is that it specifically suppresses consciousness by disrupting feedback signaling in the brain, even when feedforward signaling and basic neuronal function are left relatively unchanged. The mechanism for such selectiveness is unknown. A team of scientists from Germany (Matthew Larkum & Suzuki Mototaka, Humboldt University of Berlin) showed that three different anesthetics have the same disruptive influence on signaling along apical dendrites in cortical layer 5 pyramidal neurons in mice.

2020/01/20

Scientists Uncover a Never-Before-Seen Type of Signal Occurring in The Human Brain

A team of scientists from Germany (Matthew Larkum, Humboldt University of Berlin) and Greece (Panayiota Poirazi, Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (IMBB-FORTH)) have discovered a unique form of cell messaging occurring in the human brain that's not been seen before.