https://sfb936.net/

Coordinators: Andreas K. Engel (Dept. of Neurophysiology, UKE) and Christian Gerloff (Dept. of Neurology, UKE)

Principal investigators from the Dept. of Neurophysiology: Andreas Engel, Tobias Donner, Christian Moll, Guido Nolte, Till Schneider

This CRC has been funded by the DFG from July 2011 until June 2023.

Cognitive processes, such as perception, memory, attentional control, emotion, decision making, action planning, or conscious awareness, are based on the activation of highly distributed networks involving numerous interacting neuronal assemblies in multiple regions of the central nervous system. The essence of a normally functioning brain is proper connectivity. Neurological and psychiatric disorders causing disturbances in any of these cognitive domains, accordingly, involve malfunctions in distributed networks. Prior to the launch of the CRC 936, concepts of brain function were still largely based on the notion of local processing and specialization of brain areas. The overarching hypothesis that has been pursued by the SFB 936 was that the crucial determinant of behavior is neuronal network interaction and not local processing.

In the first funding period, the SFB has successfully applied a multi-level approach for the analysis of large-scale networks, combining different methods such as psychophysics, electro-/magnetoencephalography, functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging, multi-site microelectrode recordings, morphological-structural analyses and computational modeling. In the second funding period, the SFB 936 has extended its activities by complementing network investigation and analysis with approaches for modulation of networks, such as optogenetics, electrical stimulation, magnetic stimulation, pharmacology, and behavioral training interventions. Furthermore, computational modeling of networks has been strengthened in the second funding period. In the third funding period, the CRC 936 has moved from analyzing, modulating and modeling networks towards functional and behavioral relevance of distinct network components and their spatiotemporal dynamics in health, development, and disease.

Research of the CRC has been structured in three thematic areas: A. Multi-site communication as a basis of cognition; B. Multi-site interactions during development, plasticity and learning; C. Altered multi-site communication in brain disorders. In all thematic areas, the CRC has leveraged with great success the interdisciplinary cooperation between neuroimaging, neurophysiology from the macroscopic to the microscopic scale, neuropsychology, neurology, psychiatry, and computational neuroscience. Using synergies between these domains, a continuous and highly productive workflow in the consortium has produced a wealth of results on dynamics of large-scale brain networks, on structural and functional connectivity, on network modulation and on network models throughout the three funding periods. Furthermore, the CRC has catalyzed structural innovations with regard to new professorships and institutes as well as teaching and training, including the implementation of the Hamburg Brain School as an integrated neuroscience graduate school.

URL: https://www.crossmodal-learning.org

Coordinator: Jianwei Zhang (Dept. of Computer Science, University of Hamburg)

Principal investigators from the Dept. of Neurophysiology: Andreas Engel, Guido Nolte

This CRC has been funded by the DFG from January 2016 until December 2024.

The term “crossmodal learning” refers to the adaptive, synergistic integration of complex perceptions from multiple sensory modalities, such that the learning that occurs within any individual sensory modality can be enhanced with information from one or more other modalities. Crossmodal learning is crucial for human understanding of the world, and examples are ubiquitous, such as learning to grasp and manipulate objects, learning to read and write, learning to understand language, etc. In all these examples, visual, auditory, somatosensory, or other modalities have to be integrated. The goal of the research in the CRC has been to develop an interdisciplinary understanding of the neural, cognitive, and computational mechanisms of crossmodal learning. The following primary sub-goals of the research programme have been pursued: (1) to enrich our current understanding of the multisensory processes underlying the human mind and brain, (2) to create detailed formal models that describe crossmodal learning in both humans and machines, and (3) to build artificial systems for tasks requiring a crossmodal conception of the world. This CRC has continued and expanded an interdisciplinary cooperation between the existing fields of computer science, psychology, and neuroscience, focused on strengthening the newly established discipline of crossmodal learning. Based on a successful first funding period and extensive groundwork of collaborative research between Germany and China, the second phase of the CRC has jointly been funded by the DFG and the NSFC (Natural Science Foundation of China) as an international collaboration between the University of Hamburg, the University Medical Center Hamburg Eppendorf and the three top universities in China (Tsinghua, Beijing Normal, and Peking University) as well as the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, all located in Beijing, China.