Yearbook Articles from the Institute
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Nerve cells in the visual cortex respond to simple light stimuli, e.g. lines or edges of a certain orientation in space. Surprisingly, the preferred orientation of a cell changes over time, it shows “drift”. Our experiments not only reveal the characteristics of this phenomenon in the visual cortex, but also provide clues as to what causes it and which mechanisms counteract the drift.

Seasonal and weather-related changes in environmental conditions are normal in almost all parts of the world. They affect the availability of food and the energy expenditure of animals in a largely predictable way. However, we are currently experiencing a significant increase in annual temperatures and, in particular, in the frequency of extreme weather events. It is therefore important to understand how the body's internal processes respond to environmental changes and mediate adaptations of animals to be able to assess whether species will be able to cope or become extinct.

Animals rely on their sense of taste to detect nutrients and avoid toxins. However, different species can have very different senses of taste: what tastes sweet to humans tastes very different to cats and to birds. Diet shifts happen frequently across the phylogeny of animal species. Changes in diets, for instance, from  omnivorous to carnivorous, can be associated with changes in taste receptor number or function. Understanding how and when taste receptors change gives us insight into how new behaviors arise, how proteins evolve new functions, and into the evolutionary process itself.

We do not always perceive odors in the same way. Instead, our perception is modulated by previous experiences, context and internal states such as hunger or stress, which also modulates the behavioral response. Our research group investigates what happens in the brain during this process, using the zebrafish as a model. In the transparent brains of the animals, we are able to investigate how sensory, associative and motor circuits interact to produce odor-controlled behavior.

Within species diversity in morphology and behaviour is widespread in nature. In ruffs, a substantial amount of this diversity is encoded by variants of a supergene that have different fitness consequences for males and females.

Depression is a disorder that affects thoughts, but also the ability to engage in the most basic actions, as simple as getting out of bed. Therefore, this disorder must perturb a core network of brain regions implicated in our motivation to act. Our team at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology investigates in mice what part of the brain is active when they spontaneously engage in an action, using a novel method to record whole-brain activity. The goal is to better understand what brain circuits controls our drive to act and how they become dysfunctional in psychiatric disorders.