Welcome!
Alejandra Puerta has joined us for an internship.
New publication!
Very nice work lead by the lab of Ileana Hanganu-Opatz.
Günther, A., Chini, M., Bitzenhofer, S.H., Marquardt, A., and Hanganu-Opatz, I.L. (2026). Early rebalancing of neuroinflammatory cascades lastingly rescues prefrontal deficits in a 22q11.2ds model. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 106470. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2026.106470
Welcome!
We are happy to welcome Samuele and Thanos in the lab starting. Their PhD projects will focus on the dissection of feedforward and feedback pathways from the olfactory system to the hippocampus and how leanring and context shape the flow of information.
Check out our new publication!
As always a big pleasure to collaborate with the team of Ileana Hangan-Opatz.
Parbst, F., Kostka, J.K., Günther, A., Chen, Y.-N., Hanganu-Opatz, I.L., and Bitzenhofer, S.H. (2025). Developmental Olfactory Dysfunction and Abnormal Odor Memory in Immune-Challenged Disc1+/− Mice. J. Neurosci. 45. https://www.jneurosci.org/content/45/25/e1007242025
We are very excited about our new publication in Science!
Jammal Salameh, L., Bitzenhofer, S.H., Hanganu-Opatz, I.L., Dutschmann, M., and Egger, V. (2024). Blood pressure pulsations modulate central neuronal activity via mechanosensitive ion channels. Science 383, eadk8511. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adk8511
A big shout out to Luna Jammal Salameh and Veronica Egger, who led this study, from University Regensburg. We show that heartbeat-induced pressure waves directly modulate the firing of a subset of neurons in the olfactory bulb (and other areas). These neurons increase their firing rate within about 20 ms after heartbeats, mediated by fast mechanosensitive ion channels – most likely Piezo2. This pathway adds a fast transmission line to the interoceptive body-brain axis. The function is a matter of speculation, but we propose that a brain-wide network of ‘heartbeat sentinel neurons’ might mediate interoceptive modulation of mood and cognition.