Download Brain, Cognition and Language

Participating Research Establishments:
Faculty of Medicine
• Paul Flechsig Institute of Brain Research
• Carl Ludwig Institute of Physiology
• Rudolf Boehm Institute of Pharmacology
and Toxicology
• Institute of Biochemistry
• Interdisciplinary Centre for Clinical Research
Leipzig (IZKF)
• Innovation Centre Computer Assisted
Surgery (ICCAS)
• Centre for Neurological Rehabilitation
Leipzig (NRZ)
University Hospital
• Department of Neurology
• Department of Neurosurgery
• Day Care Clinic of Cognitive Neurology
• Department of Otorhinolaryngology
• Department of Ophthalmology
• Department of Psychiatry
• Department of Nuclear Medicine
Faculty of Biosciences, Pharmacy
and Psychology
• Institute of Psychology I
• Institute of Biology II
Faculty of Philology
• Institute of Linguistics
TOP-LEVEL RESEARCH AREA
Brain, Cognition and Language
Faculty of Physics and Earth Sciences
• Institute of Experimental Physics I
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
• Institute of Computer Science
Central Departments
• Centre for Cognitive Sciences (ZfK)
Max Planck Institute
• Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive
and Brain Science
• Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology
• Max Planck Institute for Mathematics
in the Sciences
Imprint:
Contact:
Universität Leipzig
Vice-Rector Research
Prof. Dr. M. Schlegel
Ritterstr. 26, 04109 Leipzig
E-Mail: [email protected]
www.uni-leipzig.de/profil
Speaker PbF IV:
Prof. Dr. R. Rübsamen
Coordination and
Public Relations PbF IV:
S. Hasse
Organization & Typesetting:
simons & schreiber WA GmbH
09/2007
Publisher:
Universität Leipzig
Speaker PbF IV: Prof. Dr. R. Rübsamen
Editing:
Coordination and
Public Relations PbF IV:
S. Hasse
Picture Credits:
Universität Leipzig
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive
and Brain Science
Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology
Max Planck Institute for Mathematics
in the Sciences
photocase.com
Brain,
Cognition
and
Language
What constitutes our personality lies
hidden here: in the brain, probably
our most interesting organ. Its amazing cognitive abilities such as attention,
perception, learning, memory, motor
function and language are being studied by scientists in the top-level research
area “Brain, Cognition and Language”
(PbF IV) at the University of Leipzig.
The goal is to make sense of the organic
foundations of mental achievements, to
find out how behaviour is controlled, to
better understand brain diseases and
thus develop innovative therapeutic
Brain,
Cognition
and
Language
Questions of Today
approaches. Various university and
non-university research establishments in the natural sciences
and humanities as well as in
medicine are participating.
In this way, a very broad
spectrum of methods can
be used. This multidimensional research approach
forms the basis for further
clarifying the brain’s complex
processes in interdisciplinary research projects.
“Brain, Cognition and Language” is one
of six top-level research areas at the
University of Leipzig that deals with
increasingly complex questions of the
day through accelerated interdisciplinary cooperation.
Top-Level Research Area IV
Multifunctional
Materials and
Processes from
Molecules and
Nanoobjects
Mathematical
Sciences
Environmental
Changes
and Diseases
Contested Orders
Molecular and Cellular
Communication:
Biotechnology, Bioinformatics and Biomedical
Science in Therapy and
Diagnostics
Ontogeny and Phylogeny
Humans and Primates:
A Comparison
Where did we come from
and where are we going?
– The scientists in the area
of “Ontogeny and Phylogeny”
are interested in this topic. They
want to find out how our brain develops in the course of a lifetime and
how it differs from that of other primates. First,
the way children understand the world must be
analysed: behavioural studies look into the development of their cognitive abilities – for example
memory abilities –, how they learn to judge or
understand how other people preceive the world.
What the mature adult brain is capable of and
how these capabilities worsen with age is also
being studied. The results are compared with
those from behavioural research conducted on
non-human primates. This way, the researchers
will find out which cognitive abilities separate us
from the great apes and which do not. – Can primates examine and solve complex problems, for
example, get to hidden food? Do they cooperate
with one another? How do they understand their
physical and social environment? With this, and
in connection with research in genetics and in
linguistics, it is finally possible to make general
statements about human prehistory.
Scientists are observing primate
behaviour at the Wolfgang Köhler
Primate Research Centre in
Pongoland at the Leipzig Zoo.
I want something you don’t want! – Through
play, scientists investigate the age at which
children begin to understand that people can
have different desires and goals.
Forces United against Damage to the
Nervous System
When body and mind no longer wish to obey
us correctly, nerve damage may be the cause,
as a result of heredity, accident or disease. So
it is today, for example, stroke and Alzheimer’s
disease are threatening to become common ailments. Understanding the bases of these diseases
and developing effective countermeasures is the
objective of the branches of medical research
cooperating in the area of “Degeneration, Regeneration and Therapy“. Among other things,
the scientists are investigating the mechanisms
that lead to the emergence of Parkinson’s and
Model of Alzheimer’s
disease in a mouse.
ß-amyloid plaques
result from a
mutation in the animal’s genome. These
are the harmful protein
deposits typical in the
brain with Alzheimer’s.
They increase progressively with age.
Degeneration,
Regeneration
and Therapy
Alzheimer’s disease. They are looking for innovative ways to reliably diagnose and treat these
neurodegenerative diseases. In addition, they
are continuing to improve surgical methods,
such as those, for example, employed in the
use of brain pacemakers for Parkinson’s disease
and in the surgical treatment of brain tumors.
What counts for a great deal here is the period
after the event – the recovery. Modern therapy
methods are being developed and expanded
for this, thus making it possible for a patient to
integrate once again into everyday life.
Implantation of brain
pacemakers for Parkinson’s
disease . A navigation aid
attached to the brain makes
the accurate positioning of
the electrodes in the brain
possible.
Neuronal and
Glial Interaction
Communication among Cells
100,000,000,000 or more – each of us carries
this enormous quantity of neurons in our brain.
So at least 100 billion active cells are the basis
for everything we think and feel. The neurons
communicate with one another and in doing
so process impressions and information taken
in by the senses. But what transpires in the exchange between two cells? How does a nerve
cell interact with another or with glial cells?
Scientists are looking into this with very different methods: microscopy, cell staining
or electrophysiology make it possible to
Model of the interactions between neurons (blue) and
glial cells (yellow) in the retina of the eye. Glial cells
lead surplus ions and water into the blood vessels
(red). They also recycle neuronal messengers: they
transfer the transmitters into an inactive form, which
can then be taken up again into the neurons.
Immunocytochemical triple
staining of cells from the
hippocampus of a mouse’s
brain. The neuron (blue) is
surrounded by a network of
glial cells (red) and communicates with other neurons
via a considerable number
of synapses (green).
look into the microcosm of
a cell. Then it becomes clear
what happens to neurons when we
are learning or how cell communication can be
changed through pharmacological influence.
Researchers can also describe in ever greater
detail how the activity of one cell affects that of
other cells – for example, in areas of the brain,
processing auditory sensations or in the retina of
the eye. These are the basics for understanding
larger connections. With the knowledge gained
about the interactions of individual cells in the
nervous system, other scientists in the “Brain,
Cognition and Language” research group can
work on how larger unions of cells and neuronal
networks operate.
Language and Nonverbal Communication
Understanding the Faculty of Language
Language is the one cognitive ability that we
humans share with no other species. Extremely
complex, it is the basis on which our society
interacts and functions. Understanding this system of communication is one of the tasks of the
top-level research area “Brain, Cognition and
Language”. Researchers examine the formal
structure of language as well as language production and processing. Why, for
example, is a sentence developed
grammatically the way it is
and are there identical features in this construction within different
languages around the
Analysis of Chinatang, one of the Sino-Tibetan languages of Nepal threatened with extinction. Audiovisual recordings of this language are translated and
examined linguistically. By comparing with other
languages, the world-wide distribution of grammatical structures is being investigated.
Language processing areas in the
left side of the cerebrum: the primary auditory cortex (blue), areas
of the brain that work on syntax
(red), areas of the brain that analyse
the meanings of words (yellow) and
an area that integrates syntax and
word meaning (red-striped).
world? How are words
and their meaning represented in our brain? Where
and how is language processed? How do the brain
structures of a child, learning to
speak, develop? But not only humans communicate. Primates, for example, make themselves understood with
sounds and gestures. How they use this nonverbal communication in order to maintain the
social structures within their group is examined
in primates living in the wild.
Neuronal
Networks
Response characteristics of an auditory
neuron from a gerbil brain stem. Using the
mathematical model, it can be predicted
when and how strongly the neuron responds
to a specific stimulus frequency.
The Brain – a Biocomputer?
Stimulating our senses leads to fireworks of
neuronal excitation in the brain – the input is
processed. After the stimulation, there always
follows the activity of innumerable neurons in
different areas of the brain. There are brain areas
which are active one after the other and those
which are active at the same time: the neurons cooperate in widely ramified networks. How these
are organized is what the scientists want to find
out and for this purpose they pursue stimulation
in the brain with the help of different imaging procedures, for example magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) or electroencephalography (EEG).
In the process, they are discovering at which
point which parts of the brain are active after a
certain stimulation. This way they will also be
able to investigate hemisphere specialisation, the
phenomenon that some things that we perceive
are processed more on one side of the brain than
on the other. But apart from whether something is
processed in the left or right side of the brain, the
question remains as to how a neuronal network
functions at all. Mathematicians are trying to find
Event-correlated potentials and
activation map of the cerebral cortex
measured on the surface of the brain
when hearing sounds.
an answer by analysing the dynamic processes
taking place in neuronal structures. The resulting
theoretical models should describe how the brain
takes in and processes information.