Swiss-German Barrel Cortex Function research unit supervised by the Mainz University Medical Center to receive financing for another three years
04.02.2013
The German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) are providing more than EUR 2 million to support the work of the international research unit Barrel Cortex Function (BaCoFun) over the next three years. The BaCoFun project is being coordinated by Professor Dr. Heiko Luhmann, Director of the Institute of Physiology and Pathophysiology at the University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). The research objective is to better understand physiological and pathophysiological processes in the cerebral cortex.
How exactly is information processed in the human brain, which is composed of numerous highly dynamic neuronal networks? The Barrel Cortex Function international research unit, which is a collaboration between scientists working in Zurich, Lausanne, Tübingen, and Jülich/Aachen, and researchers at the Mainz University Medical Center, has dedicated itself to answering this question. The group was established in 2010. As far as the German Research Foundation and the Swiss National Science Foundation are concerned, the results that have been produced by the unit using cutting-edge techniques in animal models are so promising that they have decided to authorize funding for a further 36 months.
"We are particularly interested in the mechanisms and networking aspects of the processing of cortical information at the cellular level," said Professor Dr. Heiko Luhmann, the coordinator of the research unit. The results of this theoretical research could represent an important contribution to the better understanding of mental illnesses and to the development of new therapeutic techniques. The new findings may also prove to be useful in the field of neurorobotics.
"This is another major success for the Neurosciences Research Unit at the Mainz University Medical Center. It is also additional proof that our profile-building strategy is bearing fruit and that the scientific focus of the Mainz University Medical Center has attracted international attention," said Professor Dr. Dr. Reinhard Urban, Chief Scientific Officer at the Mainz University Medical Center.