Research Overview
The human brain is malleable and changes throughout life through experience and learning. This property of the brain is called plasticity. Plasticity is an important and powerful property that, as neuroscientist and Nobel Prize winner Santiago Ramón y Cajal put it, makes each of us the “sculptor of our brain”. In this Emmy Noether group, we investigate, using the example of perceptual learning, which mechanisms underlie brain plasticity and how they change over the course of life. For our research, we use both psychophysics and brain imaging. Our focus is on the still relatively new MRI method called functional magnetic resonance spectroscopy (fMRS), which makes it possible to measure excitation and inhibition separately in a brain region during learning. Our translational goal is to design training procedures that can support learning in children, young and older adults, as well as patients with dementia.
Research Methods
Ongoing Research Projects
- Daimler und Benz Stiftung: "Mechanisms facilitating visual plasticity and learning in children". Website
- Hector Fellow Academy (Interdisciplinary Project): "Visual perceptual learning after a transient phase of congenital blindness: neural mechanisms of sight recovery" (together with Prof. Brigitte Röder, University of Hamburg, and Prof. Eberhart Zrenner, University Hospital Tübingen). Website
- Hector Fellow Academy (Associated Young Researcher Program): "Neuromodulatory processes involved in learning and brain plasticity across the lifespan: insights from visual perceptual learning" (together with M.Sc. Savanna Babu). Website
- Hector Fellow Academy (Research Career Development Award): "Behavioral and neuronal mechanisms of effective and efficient visual perceptual learning in children". Website
- University of Regensburg (UR Fellows Program): "Changes in the representations of the fingers in the brain after nerve injuries to the hand". Website
- Julitta und Richard Müller Stiftung: "Supporting learning and memory skills in early stage dementia through training with neurofeedback". Website
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG): Emmy Noether Group (Project number: 491290285): “A lifespan perspective of visual learning and plasticity”. Website
Collaborations
Current and past
• Prof. Dr. Nitzan Censor (Tel Aviv University, Israel), Website (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster)
• Prof. Dr. Russell Epstein (University of Pennsylvania, USA), Website (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster)
• Prof. Dr. Mark Greenlee (University of Regensburg, Germany), Website (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster)
• Prof. Dr. Berthold Langguth (Bezirksklinikum Regensburg, Germany), Website (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster)
• Prof. Dr. Fred Mast (University of Bern, Switzerland), Website (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster)
• Prof. Dr. Jason Mattingley (Queensland Brain Institute, Australia), Website (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster)
• Prof. Dr. Eric Rosen (Stanford University, USA), Website (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster)
• Prof. Dr. Yuka Sasaki (Brown University, USA), Website (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster)
• PD Dr. Martin Schecklmann (Bezirksklinikum Regensburg, Germany), Website (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster)
• Prof. Dr. Peter Tse (Dartmouth College, USA), Website (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster)
• Prof. Dr. Takeo Watanabe (Brown University, USA), Website (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster)
• Prof. Dr. Bernhard Weber (Universitätsklinikum Regensburg, Germany), Website (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster)