Gail, Alexander, Prof. Dr.

Professor for Sensorimotor Neuroscience and Neuroprosthetics


  • 1997: Physics Diploma, Philipps University, Marburg
  • 2002: Dr. rer. nat. (Physics) Philipps University, Marburg
  • 2002-2003: Postdoc (Neurophysics Laboratory of R. Eckhorn, Marburg)
  • 2003-2006: Postdoc (Laboratory of R. Andersen, Pasadena, CA, USA)
  • 2006-present: Head of Sensorimotor Research Group, German Primate Center and Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience
  • 2012-present: Professor for Sensorimotor Neuroscience and Neuroprosthetics, University of Göttingen




Major Research Interests

Sensorimotor integration, cognitive movement planning, neuroprosthetics, neuronal synchronization, visual object coding; methods: awake monkey electrophysiology, extracellular multi-channel microelectrode recordings, psychophysics in human and non-human primates, correlation and spectral coherence analysis, pattern recognition


Homepage Department/Research Group

http://www.dpz.eu/smg
http://www.bccn-goettingen.de/Groups/gail



Selected Recent Publications


  • Berger M, Agha NS, Gail A (2020). Wireless recording from unrestrained monkeys reveals motor goal encoding beyond immediate reach in frontoparietal cortex. eLife 9:e51322

  • Unakafov A, Schultz T, Gail A, Möller S, Kagan I*, Eule S*, Wolf F* (2020) Emergence and suppression of cooperation by action visibility in transparent games. PLoS Comp Biol 16(1): e1007588. DOI:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007588

  • Suriya-Arunroj L, Gail A (2019) Complementary encoding of priors in monkey fronto-parietal network supports a dual process of decision-making. eLife 8:e47581

  • Martinez-Vazquez P, Gail A (2018) Directed interaction between monkey premotor and posterior parietal cortex during motor-goal retrieval from working memory. Cerebral Cortex 28(5):1866-81

  • Morel P, Ulbrich P, Gail A (2017). What makes a reach movement effortful? – Physical effort discounting supports common minimization principles in decision making and motor control. PLoS Biology 15(6):e2001323

  • Morel P*, Ferrea E*, Taghizadeh-Sarshouri B, Cardona Audí JM, Ruff R, Hoffmann KP, Lewis S, Russold M, Dietl H, Abu-Saleh L, Schroeder D, Krautschneider W, Meiners T, Gail A (2016) Long-term decoding of movement force and direction with a wireless myoelectric implant. J Neural Eng 13(1): 016002. DOI: 10.1088/1741-2560/13/1/016002

  • Kuang S, Morel P, Gail A (2016). Planning movements in visual and physical space in monkey posterior parietal cortex. Cerebral Cortex 26(2):731-47

  • Klaes C, Westendorff S, Gail A (2011). Choosing goals not rules: Deciding among alternative rule-based action plans. Neuron 70:536-48