Ayuno Nakahashi wins fellowship from the Human Frontier Science Program

Our SFB postdoctoral researcher Ayuno Nakahashi has been awarded a three-year fellowship from the Human Frontier Science Program, making her one of only 11 percent of successful candidates for this highly prestigious international award. She will study social interactions and decision-making in rhesus monkeys, the basis for understanding neurological conditions such as those that occur in autism. With this project, Ayuno Nakahashi breaks away from conventional research methods that test subjects individually in settings they had been trained for over months. Instead, she will record wirelessly the activity of nerve cells in the brain of two animals that interact in much more naturalistic scenarios. For this project, Ayuno will continue work in very close cooperation with other SFB members.

The visual primates that we are: 'Learning by watching' in children and monkeys

During the IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning in Austin (Texas, USA), SFB members Neda Shahidi and Nivedita Mani organise this workshop together with Melissa Franch from the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston. The workshop will bring together developmental psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists to discuss recent developments in learning research in primates. The workshop will close with a panel discussion on designing artificial agents to interact with human and non-human primates. The full list of speakers and abstracts of all presentations can be found on the workshop webpage.

Workshop website

The right frame determines the movement

How does our brain describe a position in space? It has been known for some time that the target of an arm movement in some brain regions is coded relative to our line of sight, in others relative to the current position of our hand, but in any case, always relative to our own body. A new study in Nature Publications led by Alexander Gail revealed that one and the same brain area and even the same nerve cells can encode the target of the movement in different spatial reference systems, depending on what is required by the task at hand. Not only the position of the target relative to one's own body is reflected in the activity of the nerve cells, but also the position of the target relative to other objects. The processing of spatial information is therefore less a question of the area of the brain, but rather of the cognitive demand and it can be adapted dynamically.

Press release

SFB 1528 at Pint of Science

The pint of Science is an annual event which brings the science to the beer. The event takes place throughout Germany in the week from May 13 to 17. After a successful participation in last year's event, the SFB will again join in in 2024. This year's SFB representatives are Ayuno Nakahashi and Early Career Fellow Neda Shahidi. Both will present their work at the Duke Pub in Mühlenstraße 4 in the City center. Neda will start the event on May 13 and speak about Adventures of my buddy, Vin the forager. Ayuno will hit the stage on May 15. Her talk has the title I'm done for the day!. Sounds like a good time for a beer!

Julia Fischer joins the Neuroscience and beyond podcast

This podcast series featured already a series of neuroscientists in Göttingen, and discusses not only research questions, but also covers other aspects of academic life. For the newest episode, SFB-PI Julia Fischer joined host Svilen Georgiev to chat about her research on communication and and behavior in the context of evolution. Julia shares her knowledge about social hierarchies, communication, cognition and evolutionary differences among baboon species. She speaks about field work in Senegal and why baboons don't like drones. But she also touches upon the question what this research can tell us about us humans and what we can learn from baboons. In the second part of the podcast, Julia tells us about her experiences with open access, career uncertainty, her thoughts on why women are still underrepresented in science and the problems and solutions with the publishing industry.