Image showing the brain of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster (in blue). Nerve cells that together form the two ’mushroom bodies’ are coloured yellow using gene-markers. The research group is working on deciphering the circuits formed by these nerve cells. Photo: David Vasmer
Image showing the brain of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster ( in blue ). Nerve cells that together form the two 'mushroom bodies' are coloured yellow using gene-markers. The research group is working on deciphering the circuits formed by these nerve cells. Photo: David Vasmer DFG extends funding for neurobiology research group at Göttingen University The German Research Foundation (DFG) has extended its funding for the research group in Neurobiology at Göttingen University for another three years. The Research Unit "Dissection of a Brain Circuit: Structure, Plasticity and Behavioral Function of the Drosophila mushroom body" investigates nerve cells, synapses and neuronal circuits in the brain of the fruit fly Drosophila as a model system. The total funding is around 2.8 million euros. How do brains integrate present sensory stimuli and past experience with the future options for behaviour? And what do individual nerve cells, their synapses and neuronal circuits contribute to this process? How do neuronal circuits form during animal development, and what kinds of plasticity enable behaviour to adapt and become optimised through learning? "To understand the principles of how nervous systems encode information from the environment, how they learn and thereby control behaviour to achieve goals, it is useful to focus on a well-studied brain structure in an appropriate model organism," explains the spokesperson of the Research Unit, Professor André Fiala, head of the Department of Molecular Neurobiology of Behaviour at the University of Göttingen.
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