News from the neurosciences of the CRC
Call: PhD students
In the 2nd funding period of our Collaborative Research Center 1436, another…
Monday, December 9th: lecture with Patrick Haggard
On December 9th, 2024, the British neuroscientist Patrick Haggard from the Institute…
CRC Annual General Meeting and Social Get-Together
The CRC 1436 warmly invites you to our Annual General Meeting on December…
Make a note now: Conference ‘Learning & Memory’
From 28 September to 2 October 2025, we invite you to our…
Kick-off for the Female Career Days 2024
Am 17. Oktober 2024 fiel der Startschuss für die Frauenkarriere-Tage unter dem…
Collaborative Research Centre 1436 received funding for an additional four years
At Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, cutting-edge neuroscience research will continue within…
CRC 1436 Announcement – OWN-Award 2024
We are pleased to announce that our third Outstanding Women in Neuroscience…
Sign up for the “Career Path Development” workshop!
We are excited to announce that the IRTG will be hosting a…
Continuation of the CRC 1436 Funding from 2025 to 2028 approved
This summer, we submitted our application for a second funding period to…
Lecture with Anne Petzold
We are looking forward to welcoming the successful young scientist Anne Petzold…
Our research focus
Is it possible to increase the performance of memory?
What is the hidden potential of the brain and what are its limits?
How can the brain’s cognitive potential be mobilized and enhanced?
The architecture of our brain provides biological limits for the performance of memory, attention, and our capacity for learning; this is evident on both the micro and macro scale. However, there is large variability within these limits and individual cognitive abilities can be improved through directed training. The goal of our Collaborative Research Center (CRC) is to uncover the performance limits of the human brain and to explore methodological approaches for improving this performance. We aim to understand which neurobiological principles limit cognitive resources and how these resources can be fully accessed or even enhanced. Further, we will identify new ways to preserve neural resources across the lifespan with targeted interventions.
More than 40 scientists in 22 individual projects are currently working in our CRC towards this exciting neuroscientific topic, which is also highly relevant in our current society.
Using the latest neuroscientific technologies and innovative methods, human and animal experimental studies will examine individual variability and transferable improvement in cognitive function. We place a specific focus on how performance improvements in one task can be transferred to other tasks and when task performance comes at the expense of other abilities. We also ask, why do cognitive abilities decline with age? And what are the tremendous resources of “super-agers”? Further, we are investigating how molecular and biochemical processes affect cognitive performance, for instance, with the deposition of tau and amyloid in the brain, or those that occur with sleep deprivation or other environmental influences. This project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and encompasses both the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg and the Leibniz Institute of Neurobiology, as well as the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) Magdeburg site, Freie Universität Berlin, Charitè Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Forschungszentrum Jülich, and the universities of Düsseldorf, Heidelberg, and Göttingen.
Co-Spokesperson Dr. Michael Kreutz & Spokesperson Prof. Dr. med. Emrah Düzel
Publications of the CRC
