Coordination Funds

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Fred Wolf
• Subject Area: Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology ; Developmental Neurobiology ; Evolutionary Cell and Developmental Biology (Zoology) ; Experimental and Theoretical Network Neuroscience
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 430156726

Despite spectacular progress in artificial intelligence and machine learning, the information processing capabilities of animal and human brains still far surpass man made machines. This pertains particularly with respect to the robustness and flexibility of neurobiological information processing and its energy efficiency. Recent progress has opened new and stringent perspectives on the evolution of central nervous system structure, information processing and development. The development of advanced computational optimization theories for neuronal circuits has seen similar progress over the past decade. Together these developments are setting the stage to take a novel approach and systematically decipher the principles underlying the evolution and optimization of biological neuronal information processing. The mission of the PP ‘Evolutionary Optimisation of Neuronal Processing’, is to define paradigms and standards for a new theory-grounded and quantitatively precise approach to neural circuit evolution to make the best use of opportunities to generate core examples and success stories for solving the selective pressures driving innovations in nervous system evolution, for the integration of genomic studies of neural cell type and neural circuit evolution, as well as for a theoretical and quantitative understanding of their evolutionary driving forces. The PP serves the mission to support pioneering studies in three thematic foci A) The Evolution of Core Circuits, B) Defining the Limits of Performance and B) Genomic Trajectories of Neural Circuit Evolution. These thematic foci are set up to utilize Germany’s unique infrastructure in theoretical and systems neuroscience, support collaboration and cross-fertilization between traditionally separated communities such as evolutionary developmental biology and theoretical neuroscience and form a vigorous community to train a next generation of evolutionary and integrative neuroscientists.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 2205: Evolutionary Optimisation of Neuronal Processing