Die Grenze

Die Grenze - Markus Bauer

Following two PostDocs at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging/Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL in London and the Max-Planck Institute in Berlin, I joined the University of Nottingham to pursue my research as assistant professor.

My research currently has mainly two (related) foci:

On the one hand I am interested how chemical neuromodulators can tune neuronal information processing and thereby enable us to adapt to a range of environmental situations but are also likely to mediate interindividual differences in behaviour and cognition.

On the other hand I am interested in how our brain combines previously learned information (e.g. long term episodic memory and semantic memory) or higher level goals with the sensory signals provided by our instantaneous environment during perception and decision making.

It is well known that the superior capabilities of the human mind relies particularly on the efficient use and combination of these types of 'information', yet the neuronal mechanisms underlying its integration are currently debated. One aspect of particular relevance here are oscillatory synchronization phenomena - brain waves - that may have specific roles for communicating such bottom-up and top-down driven signals between different levels of the cortical hierarchy.