One hallmark of aging is a motor functioning decline that represents a crucial impediment for healthy and active living. A candidate mechanism for this motor decline in older adults is an agerelated deterioration of higher cognitive (‘executive’) functions and their involvement in motor control. Specifically, older adults have been demonstrated to rely on executive functions to a larger extent than young adults when performing complex motor ...
Functional connectivity analysis is a novel technique that allows studying the neuronal interaction and causal directions of regional brain activation during language processing This technique is promising for clinical purposes as it is applicable in the interpretation of functional activation in patients with brain lesions in language related areas The analysis of an individual connectome may be able to assist in delineating the surgical ...
Perception, action, and cognition are achieved through concerted neural activity in large-scale brain networks. As such, understanding the basic mechanisms of long-range neuronal communication may permit to elucidate how the brain orchestrates when we perform a complex task. Motor coordination is a prototypical example of complex behaviour, and its study is very well suited for broader investigations about the architecture and functioning of ...
This project proposal concerns the use of the dog as a natural animal model for research on the
effects of a treatment used in human psychiatry that modulates the brain function in regions that
are deficient in human depression and anxiety disorders. The problem with these diseases is that
treatment outcome with classical modalities is suboptimal. Alternative treatments involve noninvasive
...
The major goal of this project is to explore the effect of both current and historic landscape characteristics on plant and pollinator diversity in structurally well-connected and fragmented grassland systems. We will focus both on good-quality grassland patches as well as on other landscape elements (small grassland remnants, grassy verges, power-line clear-cuts) to determine the role of these elements in supporting plants, pollinators and ...
Axonal branching is an essential mechanism in nervous system function, as it allows a single neuron to connect to multiple post-synaptic targets and thus increases the complexity and connectivity of neural networks. Collateral formation could be a therapeutic target to promote functional recovery in a wide range of nervous system diseases and injuries. However, the mechanisms allowing the formation and stabilization of specific ...
Nearly every activity of daily life requires the integrated movements of both hands. How smooth this interaction is actually being controlled becomes only obvious when the system is challenged, as for example in the case of higher task demand or when interregional neural communication is hampered following a lesion. A local lesion following a stroke might eventually lead to complex disturbance and subsequent remodelling of brain structure and ...