Assessing magnetoreception and navigation-hypotheses in the lab (Nav01)

• Subject Area: Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 395940726

To achieve a comprehensive understanding of magnetoreception and vertebrate navigation, it is essential that hypotheses generated from theory, biochemistry, molecular biology, neuroanatomy, and/or neurophysiology can be validated at the behavioural level. Therefore, this project will develop RNAi knockdown techniques and use behavioural tests in orientation cages under meticulously controlled static and time-dependent magnetic fields to test predictions made by the signal detection and neural processing sections. The obtained results will feed back lessons learned from behaviour to the sections the hypotheses originated from.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1372: Magnetoreception and navigation in vertebrates: from biophysics to brain and behaviour
• Applicant Institution: Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg
• Project Heads: Professor Dr. Henrik Mouritsen; Professorin Constance Scharff, Ph.D., since 1/2023