Past events

Munc13 proteins are key determinants of synaptic vesicle priming and absolutely essential for the completion of the synaptic vesicle cycle at presynaptic active zones. Munc13 function is regulated by three different Ca2+-dependent pathways, and elevations of the presynaptic Ca2+ concentration during neuronal activity leads to a Munc13-dependent increase in the synaptic vesicle priming rate, and consequently to dynamic changes in the efficacy of neurotransmission. I will describe how the Ca2+-dependent regulation of Munc13s affects synaptic signaling in intact circuits, and present the first known synaptopathy caused by a mutation in Munc13-1, which affects a recently discovered interplay between Munc13s, voltage-gated Ca2+ channels, and synaptic vesicle fusogenicity.

At the heart of Hitler's murderous machine in Nazi Germany lay several powerful and influential doctors and neuroscientists providing the energy, scientific expertise and legitimacy for the process leading up to the Holocaust. Psychiatrists arguably more than any other medical specialty played a critical role; many of them demonstrating a profound depth of involvement and commitment to the atrocities. This included for the first time in history, psychiatrists seeking to systematically exterminate their patients. Several misconceptions led to this misconduct, which will be discussed. Psychiatry during this period provides a most horrifying example of how clinical management and neuroscience may be perverted by external forces.

Studies over more than a decade have highlighted a pivotal role for the immune system in maintaining life-long brain plasticity. Such activity is achieved through the brain’s epithelial borders, comprised of the brain’s choroid plexus epithelium, which serves as a selective and educative gateway for the entry of healing immune cells to the brain. Activity of this gateway is dependent on the immune system, which almost paradoxically, dysfunctions in brain aging and neurodegenerative diseases, when this gateway is most greatly needed. Recently, we discovered that regulatory pathways that keep the normal and young immune system under control become limiting factors under Alzheimer’s disease pathology; breaking this immune regulatory pathway in a well-controlled way arrests AD and restores cognitive ability.

From detecting food to locating lurking predators, visual search -- the ability to find an object of interest against a background -- needs to be accurate and fast to ensure survival. In mammals, this led to the development of a parallel search mode, pop-out, which enables fast detection time that is not dependent on the number of distracting objects. Although it may be beneficial to most animals, pop-out behavior has been observed only in mammals, where its neural correlates are found as early as V1 in contextually modulated cells that encode aspects of saliency. I will describe our recent findings of pop-out visual search in the archer fish and discuss possible implications about universality of visual search among vertebrates.

Bats have a unique view of the world: ‘seeing’ their environment with their ears through echolocation. They use this active sensing system to master their predominantly dark world, e.g. for detecting and targeting of small insect prey, navigating through complex vegetation or interaction with other individuals. Over the last decades we have developed a solid understanding of how bats apply echolocation to achieve this. However, many questions are still unsolved, e.g. assessment of larger objects like trees or even whole habitats. In my talk, I will show how bats recognize and deal with water surfaces. My results demonstrate that a recognition pattern can be very simple: for bats any smooth surface is perceived as a water surface. Likely through a long evolutionary consolidation without any contradicting experiences, this is phylogenetically wide spread among bats, extremely hardwired and even innate. In addition I will talk about the integration of varying sensory input, the role of spatial memory and potential evolutionarytraps that may arise from this. Echolocation is a rather short-ranged sensing system, which leaves the intriguing question of how bats orientate and navigate over long distances. They face this challenge not only during daily foraging trips but also on migration routes which can be over 1,000 kilometers long. Recent evidence has shown that bats can, for example, make use of the Earth’s magnetic field. However, the exact functional mechanism of this ability is as yet largely unknown. In this context, I will present data showing that our tested bat species recognizes the sky’s polarization pattern at dusk and uses it as a calibrating system for its magnetic compass. This is the only known case so far for a mammal to use this sensory light cue.