ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

In Europe estimated 300.000 people are suffering from a spinal cord injury (SCI) with 11.000 new injuries per year. The consequences of spinal cord injury are tremendous for these individuals. The loss of motor functions especially of the arm and grasping function – 40% are tetraplegics – leads to a life-long dependency on care givers and therefore to a dramatic decrease in quality of life in these often young individuals. With the help of neuroprostheses, grasp and elbow function can be substantially improved. However, remaining body movements often do not provide enough degrees of freedom to control the neuroprosthesis. The ideal solution for voluntary control of an upper extremity neuroprosthesis would be to directly record motor commands from the corresponding cortical areas and convert them into control signals. This would realize a technical bypass around the interrupted nerve fiber tracts in the spinal cord. A Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) transform mentally induced changes of brain signals into control signals and serve as an alternative human-machine interface. We showed first results in EEG-based control of a neuroprosthesis in several persons with SCI in the last decade, however, the control is still unnatural and cumbersome. The objective of FEEL YOUR REACH is to develop a novel control framework that incorporates goal directed movement intention, movement decoding, error processing, processing of sensory feedback to allow a more natural control of a neuroprosthesis. To achieve this aim a goal directed movement decoder will be realized, and continuous error potential decoding will be included. Both will be finally joined together with an artificial kinesthetic sensory feedback display attached to the user. We hypothesize that with these mechanisms a user will be able to naturally control an neuroprosthesis with his/ her mind only.

1 994 161 €

Start date: 2016-05-01, End date: 2021-07-31

Better health is central to human happiness and wellbeing. It also contributes substantially to economic progress, as healthy populations live longer and are more productive. Accordingly, the EU defined the improvement of health as a fundamental element of its “Europe 2020” strategy. The corresponding public health policies are assessed on the basis of a structural indicator for “Health Expectancy” (HE). Unfortunately, HE estimates are extremely sensitive to certain methodological issues of which many are widely ignored. First, the common measurement of population health by the responses to specific survey questions is ambiguous. As a consequence, statistics on levels and trends of HE vary significantly depending on the underlying survey data and health indicators. Almost completely unrecognized is a second problem: HE estimates are also highly sensitive to particular technical features, e.g. the age range and partitioning selected for analysis and the technique chosen to add the health dimension to the life table. The efforts that have been hitherto undertaken to improve the estimation of HE focus primarily on the measurement of health with surveys, whereas the effects of the chosen HE indicator, data and method remain largely unexplored. The central aim of LETHE is to fill these gaps through a systematic exploration of the HE indicator’s sensitivity to these issues. To emphasize the empirical significance of the proposed research, the effects will be investigated in the context of some major actual research questions, in particular the “compression versus expansion of morbidity” debate and the differences in HE between European populations and subpopulations. Finally, the project aims to identify the particular health measure that is most strongly associated with people’s actual happiness. These innovative approaches feature the potential to provide not only new insights into the levels and trends of HE, but also about its main drivers and causation mechanisms.

1 713 353 €

Start date: 2017-09-01, End date: 2022-08-31

Strongly magnetic rare-earth atoms are fantastic species to study few- and many-body dipolar quantum physics with ultracold gases. Their appeal leans on their spectacular properties (many stable isotopes, large dipole moment, unconventional interactions, and a rich atomic spectrum). In 2012 my group created the first Bose-Einstein condensate of erbium and shortly thereafter the first degenerate Fermi gas. My pioneering studies, together with the result on dysprosium by the Lev´s group, have triggered an intense research activity in our community on these exotic species. The RARE project aims at converting complexity into opportunity by exploiting the newly emerged opportunity provided by magnetic rare-earth atoms to access fascinating, yet rather unexplored, quantum regimes. It roots into two innate properties of magnetic lanthanides, namely their large and permanent magnetic dipole moment, and their many valence electrons. With these properties in mind, my proposal targets to obtain groundbreaking insights into dipolar quantum physics and multi-electron ultracold Rydberg gasses: 1) Realization of the first dipolar quantum mixtures, by combining Er and Dy. With this powerful system, we aim to study exotic states of matter under the influence of the strong anisotropic and long-range dipole-dipole interaction, such as anisotropic Cooper pairing and superfluidity, and weakly-bound polar ErDy molecules. 2) Study of non-polarized dipoles at zero and ultra-weak polarizing (magnetic) fields, where the atomic dipole are free to orient. In this special setting, we plan to demonstrate new quantum phases, such as spin-orbit coupled, spinor, and nematic phases. 3) Creation of multi-electron ultracold Rydberg gases, in which the Rydberg and core electrons can be separately controlled and manipulated. This innovative project goes far beyond the state of the art and promises to capture truly new scientific horizons of quantum physics with ultracold atoms. for later

1 992 368 €

Start date: 2016-07-01, End date: 2021-12-31