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EXC 307:  Interdisciplinary Centre for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN)

Subject Area Neurosciences
Term from 2007 to 2019
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 49762668
 
Final Report Year 2020

Final Report Abstract

The Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN) has been the joint platform of systems neuroscience in Tübingen since 2007. CIN members have been investigating the question how the brain generates its array of “higher level” functions like perception, memory, emotions, communication, movement – in sum functions that define human per-sonalities – and how they are impaired by disease. We have been guided by the conviction that only an integrative approach can provide the desired answers. Correspondingly, CIN research groups have worked on multiple levels, integrating research on molecules and genes, neurons and neuronal networks, as well as on behaviour and cognition. To this end, they have deployed a wide variety of methods: imaging, electrophysiology, behavioural stud-ies, theoretical modelling – implemented in vitro, in vivo and in silico, as appropriate. With the funding from the excellence initiative, the CIN has been able to set up and fill 6 pro-fessorships right from the start and to recruit altogether 20 junior research group leaders with tenure perspective. Seven of them were promoted to the rank of professor as a result of a rigorous evaluation. Furthermore, two senior professorships could be supported. The circle of CIN members, initially involving 25 principle investigators, grew over the years to about 90. Research of members was supported by “pool project” grants based on CIN intramural funding – small-scale and revolving around specific research questions – resulting in many publications, doctorates, and in quite a few cases in applications for larger scale external funding. Overall, the research output of CIN groups has been extremely respectable, not only in terms of quantity, but above all in terms of quality, with CIN publications typically placed among the 10% most impactful in their respective fields. In order to meet its responsibility towards the next generation, the CIN founded the Tübingen Graduate Training Centre (GTC) Neuroscience, compromising three complementary neuro-science graduate schools. The GTC provides training to 45 master students per year and has graduated a total of 300 doctoral students so far. A key measure of outreach and communication, the Neuroscience Lab for High School Students brought the lab experience to about 2,000 pupils and 200 teachers annually. With our long-standing international partners from Japan at NIPS (Okazaki) and Kyoto University the student and staff exchange is cur-rently planned to be expanded by a joint research programme. The CIN has become a major pillar of the Tübingen Neuro Campus (TNC, founded 2018), an alliance in which the CIN is complemented by several more clinically or theoretically oriented institutions, supporting conceptual and methodological exchange and interactions.

Link to the final report

https://dx.doi.org/10.2314/GBV:1697106641

Publications

 
 

Additional Information

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