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Projekt Druckansicht

GRK 1328:  Gehirn und Verhalten: Neurobiologische Grundlagen von Emotion und sozialer Kognition bei Schizophrenie und Autismus

Fachliche Zuordnung Neurowissenschaften
Förderung Förderung von 2006 bis 2015
Projektkennung Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 13820592
 
Erstellungsjahr 2015

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

The International Research Training Group “Brain-behavior relationship of emotion and social cognition in schizophrenia and autism” (IRTG 1328) has been formed by German and American scientists of the RWTH Aachen University with the University Hospital Aachen, the Research Center Jülich (all within the Jülich Aachen Research Alliance, JARA) and the University of Pennsylvania. The major aims of the IRTG were interdisciplinary and international scientific co-operation and the support of young scientists with aspiration to cutting-edge research. The IRTG offered a study program that structured an internationally collaborative doctoral process under the joint supervision of a German and an American supervisor. Over a period of ten years, doctoral and postdoctoral IRTG researchers have provided novel and cutting-edge insights into the neurobiological basis and development of disturbed emotion and social cognition in schizophrenia, autism and analysed the disorder specificity by comparisons to other psychiatric disorders. Advanced brain imaging techniques, including structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI and fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG) and simultaneous fMRI-EEG, positron emission tomography (PET), magnetoencephalography (MEG), receptor distribution and microstructural, architectonic brain mapping were applied and a translational approach has been started by including animal research to model impairments in schizophrenia and autism. Starting in April 2006, the IRTG provided in sum 40 scholarships for doctoral researchers (PhDs), 34 scholarships for medical researchers (MDs), and 9 postdoctoral researcher positions, with 28 associated and an additional 30 doctoral and postdoctoral researchers at the American partner side. Highly qualified aspiring (post)doctoral researchers from all over the world participated in the program, coming from 19 nations, among them the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Poland, Bulgaria, Russia, Malaysia, Taiwan, China and certainly Germany. All IRTG members participated in a wide range of obligatory and non-obligatory events including regular meetings, journal clubs, clinical education, courses and workshops, and annual Winter Schools, during which the IRTG members presented and discussed their work with international collaborators. All successful stipend holders spent on average 6 months at University of Pennsylvania during their IRTG membership (mobility period) with their American supervisor, and in turn, many of American IRTG participants visited Aachen for research fellowships to closely work with their German supervisor, further strengthening the German-American collaboration. Since 2007 295 articles with a mean impact factor of 4.9 were published jointly, in addition to 15 book chapters and 1 book. The total number of dissertations is up to now 44 and 38 of dissertations received a summa cum laude or magna cum laude grade. The stipend holders had 21 dissertations (10 summa cum laude, 10 magna cum laude, 1 cum laude), medical students 10 (2 summa cum laude, 4 magna cum laude, 4 cum laude) and associated doctoral researchers 13 (2 summa cum laude, 10 magna cum laude, 1 cum laude). One medical doctoral student and one associate doctoral researcher will finish in January 2015. The doctoral and postdoctoral researchers received 34 travel and 7 poster awards, 4 awards for research and 10 for research stays and 7 others. 7 doctoral researchers quitted prematurely mainly for personal reasons and one left for industry. With the projects we were not only able to foster and promote individual careers of young scientists (for example one full professorship of a postdoc and a junior professorship of a medical doctoral student) but also strengthen and enlarge international cooperations as well as advance the field of clinical neurosciences with respect to the neurobiological bases of schizophrenia and autism. We developed paradigms to study not only emotion processing but the broader concept of social cognition, i.e. empathy, under neuroimaging conditions, we explored influencing factors and innovative therapeutic options such as neurofeedback in patients, we studied learning processes in mouse models of the disorders, and realized methodological improvements for fMRI and MEG, but also added EEG and physiological measures to our fMRI measurements.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

 
 

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