Rik van der Kant, Natalia Goriounova and Priyanka Rao-Ruiz, researchers at the Center for Neurogenomics & Cognitive Research at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, have been awarded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) with a Vidi grant worth 800,000 euros.

Dr. Christiaan de Kock awarded Open Competition ENW-M-2 grant (700k€) to study multisensory processing in primary visual cortex.

Teams at the VU Amsterdam, Heidelberg University, Center of Advanced European Studies and Research (Bonn) and Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology (Martinsried) achieve next step in understanding how sensory information is represented across different cell-types of primary somatosensory (barrel) cortex of behaving rats. Their findings were published in Communications Biology.

The group of Klaus Linkenkaer-Hansen (INF) established a method to estimate excitation/inhibition balance using the theory of critical brain dynamics. By teaming up with the group of Hilgo Bruining (Amsterdam UMC), the method is validated for physiological stratification of autism spectrum disorder.

Biomarker integration for better clinical decision making

Arthur-Ervin Avramiea, Richard Hardstone and colleagues from the team of Klaus Linkenkaer-Hansen (INF) publish in eLife that pre-stimulus phase and amplitude regulation of stimulus processing is maximized when neuronal networks operate in the critical state.

Development and modulation of mouse and human cortical circuitry

Natalia Goriounova published the association between large human pyramidal neurons that generate fast action potentials and intelligence in eLIFE

Joshua Obermayer and Tim Heistek publish their study on cholinergic regulation of lateral inhibition in human and mouse cortex in Nature Communications