Aug 2020: This is science communication at its best. The BBC NEWS did an extensive and sensitive feature about the protagonist of my feature documentary LOST IN FACE, faceblind Carlotta, and her art. I never expected to reach such a huge audience for our brain research, the complexity of the human brain, and the fact that each of us has a very individual view of the world around us. 

June 2020: My documentary film LOST IN FACE about faceblind Carlotta wins "Best Debut Film" at the German Documentary Film Awards [german] ceremony.

March 2020: Valentin joined a group of developers, designers and science communicators to develop an anonymous tracking app to detect spreading of Covid-19 at its earliest stage. The hackathon, initiated by the German Federal Government attracted >40.000 people to work on >2.000 projects. What a great interdisciplinary community effort! Our project PANDOA made it on the short list of interesting projects and we now wait for further notice about which projects will receive funding by the German State Department. 

Project page:  https://devpost.com/software/08_pandoa-corona-virus-tracker

 

Jan 2020: Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a noninvasive method to modulate brain activity and behavior in humans. Still, stimulation effects substantially vary across studies and individuals, thereby restricting the large-scale application of TMS in research or clinical settings. We revealed that low-frequency stimulation had opposite impact 

Dez 2019: My short documentary CARLOTTA'S FACE about faceblind Carlotta was screened at the 12th Forum Wissenschaftskommunikation, the largest conference for Science Communication in Germany. Together with the animation artist Frédéric Schuld, we illustrated how a brain deficit can lead to social exclusion but also be the source of beautiful art. The film travelled more than 200 film festivals worldwide and won awards at documentary and animation festivals but also awards for communicating science. 

Title: Analyzing the energy demands of the human brain 

Oct 2019: The human brain has high energy demands but the energetic demands of brain network organization is still unknown. With a novel brain imaging technique (simultaneous PET/MRI), we are currently able to measure both energy metabolism of glucose and oxygen, as well as dynamic network organization. ...

June 2019: Valentin received a planning grant from the German VolkswagenStiftung that aims at new research territories between life and natural sciences. The new initiative is called 'Change of course'. With the help of this proposal, Valentin's group wants to initiate neuroenergetic modeling to bridge theknowledge gap between the molecular and systems level of the brain. He will therefore team up with colleagues from mathematics, physics, and engineering for "Modelling neuroenergetics design".

https://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/en/funding/our-funding-portfolio-at-a-glance/change-of-course-%E2%80%93-exploring-new-research-territories-between-the-life-sciences-and-science-or-engineering

June 2019: Are you a research group leader at LMU, MPI, or TUM? I guess, we all struggle with the same questions: How to handle administration, run a little research 'start-up', and develop an overall research strategy? I want to initiate a meetup for Munich-based research group leaders to find collaborators and exchange on academic topics. Are you from Munich or know someone? Join the meetup-group here:

May 2019: We expected identical effects across the cortex after stimulation with TMS, but our results show that stimulation effects substantially vary across individuals and brain regions. The manuscript is available on bioRxiv and we provide data/code on OpenNEURO. The figure shows

Feb 2019: We published the first application of our novel, directional signaling measure to brain data from patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). We found that specific routes of directional signaling, or effective connectivity, are disrupted in the default mode network of patients. This approach, 

Oct 2018: Katarzyna established metabolic imaging of GABA and glutamate in my lab and published important work on the dynamics of these neurotransmitters in the human brain. You can find the paper in the Journal of Neuroscience: Opposite dynamics of GABA and glutamate levels in the occipital cortex during visual processing.

Here's some press coverage of our work on GABA/glutamate signaling in the human brain.

Jun 2018: Gabriel Castrillon will give a talk on "Inhibitory TMS differentially affects brain network communication depending on the stimulation site" during OHBM 2018 in Singapore. Schedule: Tue, June 19, Session: Brain Stimulation Methods 

Feb 2018: During the next 5 years, Valentin will apply novel methods and simultaneous PET/MRI brain imaging to track memory consolidation in the human brain. ERC grants are prestigious funding from the European Research Council of the EU. 

News from TUM: in german; in english 

Dec 2017: Katarzyna Kurcyus did a great job during her PhD-period in my lab and successfully submitted her PhD thesis "Using magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study neural activity: The role of inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmitters for systems-level brain dynamics"