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!

After we were able to say goodbye to three of our Bachelor students who despite the pandemic were able to finish their theses, we are very happy about our new Bachelor student Nadine Klinker.
The topic of her bachelor thesis are the molecular mechanisms of risk behaviour in an animal model of bipolar disorder. By immunohistochemical investigation she is looking for the methyl
CpG-binding protein 2 (MeCP2) in different brain regions. Quantitative data will be collected to investigate a link between theisepigenetic factor, which is expressed in central nervous tissue,
and the risk behaviour of rats. The rats were therefore tested in an operant rodent version of the Iowa gambling task.
We are looking forward working with you!

In a recently published study in Behavioural Brain Research, Anna and Nadja, together with Sebastian and Hiroshi from the Department Biopsychology at the Ruhr-University Bochum, investigated the effects of early life stress on the turning behavior of rats using DeepLabCut. Interestingly, prolonged maternal separation leads to atypical leftward asymmetry in turning behavior and more left than right turns in the elevated plus maze. Analyzing turning behavior after stress exposure might even be a good way to investigate atypical asymmetries in psychiatric models.

Check out their study Asymmetry of turning behavior in rats is modulated by early life stress here.