On Tuesday, October 26th Annina successfully defended her MD thesis with the title ‘Impaired cognitive self-awareness mediates the association between alexithymia and excitation/inhibition balance in the pgACC’. Verry well done! We wish you all the best for your future!

Not only professionally but also in our private life fantastic things happened.
Prof. Dr. Nadja Freund pioneered in July 2019 and gave birth to little Keno. In October 2020 Dominik Beyer followed her in becoming parent when his son Florentin was born. Just four months later, in February 2021, Prof. Dr. Martina Mann’s became grandmother to little Linnea. In March 2021, Emma Maria was born, making Jennifer Koch a proud mum.
Last but not least, in May 2021 David became father to little Sophie. We wish the parents all the best. The next generation of young scientists is assured.

In our new published study Prefrontal dopamine D1 receptor manipulation influences anxiety behavior and induces neuroinflammation within the hippocampus Dominik, Nadja and Annika investigated the effects of dopamine D1 receptor (D1R) over-expression and its termination on anxiety and the inflammatory state within the hippocampus. Interestingly, termination of D1R over-expression resulted in increased anxiety and inflammation. In addition, anxiety as well as inflammatory state correlated positively.

Find out more about the study here (link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33683478/)

We are very pleased to welcome Florian Rehrmann and Kirsten Schmerder back to our group. After Florian successfully completed his master’s thesis in our laboratory in 2020, he is now back as replace for Jennifer Koch during her maternity leave. We couldn’t ask for a better one for these tasks, as Florian got to know the laboratory and the processes very well during his master’s thesis.
Kirsten also successfully completed her master’s thesis with us in 2020 and is now returning to our work group as a doctoral candidate. During her PhD, she will continue her research and hopefully deepen our knowledge about neurobiological processes during depressive and manic episodes in bipolar disorder models. She will implement optogenetic approaches to be able to interfere with the dopaminergic system during behavioral assessment.
We are looking forward working together (again).

From 11/16/20 to 11/27/20 the practical course “Neurobiological visualization of social interaction in mice” took place in our group.
During this time, two students were able to conduct behavioral tests and record ultrasonic vocalizations under supervision. They also got an insight into the corresponding evaluation software. Tissue samples were taken from the animals and sections made with the cryostat. Immunohistological staining was carried out with subsequent photo documentation at the microscope.
This all-around insight into animal research will be given to two more trainees on December 7th, 2020.

We were also able welcome a new doctoral student to our group in November.
Sevim came from Turkey and is working on her PhD with us for one year and in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Onur Güntürkün (Department of Biopsychology). Her focus is on the effects of prenatal stress on functional cerebral asymmetries and their underlying molecular background. She will be investigating rats by using comprehensive methods including several behavioural tests and genetic analyses.
If you want to learn more about Sevim, click HERE.

Welcome and good luck with your experiments.

Last week Annakrina very successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis on early life stress and epigenetic mechanisms. She was able to include 12 manuscripts in her thesis. The committee was very impressed by her work.  Congratulations, Dr. Mundorf!