The researchers in the interdisciplinary CRC 1089 aim to make a significant contribution to a better understanding of how the brain works. However, a particular goal is also to investigate brain dysfunction in two of the most common neurological diseases: Epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease. The speaker of the Collaborative Research Center is the neuroscientist Prof. Dr. Heinz Beck, head of the Institute for Experimental Epileptology and Cognition Research at the University and the University Hospital of Bonn and a member of the ImmunoSensation2 Cluster of Excellence. Vice speaker is the biochemist Prof. Dr. Susanne Schoch McGovern from the Institute of Neuropathology at the University of Bonn.
Better understanding of how the brain works
At the most elementary level, the researchers want to investigate the properties of individual synapses - the contact points between nerve cells. They also want to investigate how these connections between brain cells are affected by diseases in their structure and function. At the next level up, the scientists want to find out how the many tens of thousands of synaptic input signals that arrive at cell processes of the nerve cells, so-called dendrites, are processed. Here, too, the focus is on epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease. At the level of neuronal networks, the researchers are interested in understanding the interplay between different types of nerve cells in the development of normal and pathologically disturbed behavior. To achieve these goals, mathematical and theoretical methods will be increasingly applied in the third funding period.
Transdisciplinary research
The Collaborative Research Center involves neuropathologists, molecular geneticists, neurophysiologists, cell biologists, chemists, and cellular neuroscientists, among others. This interdisciplinary approach allows a combination of novel techniques to be applied.
The research is therefore closely embedded in the Transdisciplinary Research Area (TRA) "Life and Health" of the University of Bonn, which is chaired by Prof. Dr. Heinz Beck as one of two spokespersons, together with Prof. Dr. Waldemar Kolanus from the LIMES Institute of the University of Bonn. The Transdisciplinary Research Area is one of six interfaculty alliances that were established in the course of the funding of excellence at the University of Bonn. The goal is to bring together researchers from different disciplines to work together on issues relevant to the future.