ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

Run away, sidestep, duck-and-cover, watch: when under threat, humans immediately choreograph a large repertoire of defensive actions. Understanding action-selection under threat is important for anybody wanting to explain why anxiety disorders imply some of these behaviours in harmless situations. Current concepts of human defensive behaviour are largely derived from rodent research and focus on a small number of broad, cross-species, action tendencies. This is likely to underestimate the complexity of the underlying action-selection mechanisms. This research programme will take decisive steps to understand these psychological mechanisms and elucidate their neural implementation. To elicit threat-related action in the laboratory, I will use virtual reality computer games with full body motion, and track actions with motion-capture technology. Based on a cognitive-computational framework, I will systematically characterise the space of actions under threat, investigate the psychological mechanisms by which actions are selected in different scenarios, and describe them with computational algorithms that allow quantitative predictions. To independently verify their neural implementation, I will use wearable magnetoencephalography (MEG) in freely moving subjects. This proposal fills a lacuna between defence system concepts based on rodent research, emotion psychology, and clinical accounts of anxiety disorders. By combining a stringent experimental approach with the formalism of cognitive-computational psychology, it furnishes a unique opportunity to understand the mechanisms of action-selection under threat, and how these are distinct from more general-purpose action-selection systems. Beyond its immediate scope, the proposal has a potential to lead to a better understanding of anxiety disorders, and to pave the way towards improved diagnostics and therapies.

1 998 750 €

Start date: 2019-10-01, End date: 2024-09-30

The survival of species depends critically on infant survival and development. Human infants are, however, vulnerable and completely dependent on caregiving parents, not just for survival but also for their development. Darwin and Lorenz have long argued that there are specific infant facial features that elicit attention and responsiveness in adults. Until recently this has not been possible to study but neuroimaging has started to reveal some of the brain circuitry. However, it is not known how the brain changes over time in new parents as they gain experience with caregiving. Equally, little is known about the underlying brain mechanisms associated with disruption to normal parental caregiving. I propose to study the brain changes associated with normal and disrupted development of parental caregiving in new parents who will undergo neuroimaging and psychological testing using standardised databases and test batteries of caregiving tasks. Subproject 1 will investigate the normal development of parental caregiving, beginning before pregnancy, using a longitudinal study of structural and functional brain changes in both women and men combined with their behavioural measures on caregiving tasks. Subproject 2 will investigate the disrupted development of parental caregiving using a cross-sectional design to study the brain and behavioural effects on caregiving during potential disruptive changes to the parent or child. Specifically, my focus will be on A) parental sleep disruption and B) infant craniofacial abnormality of cleft lip and palate. Finally, understanding the full brain mechanisms and architecture underlying parental caregiving requires a mechanistic synthesis of the findings of normal and disrupted development. Subproject 3 will use our existing advanced computational models to combine the findings from normal and disrupted development in order to identify the fundamental brain mechanisms and networks underlying the development of parenting.

1 997 121 €

Start date: 2014-05-01, End date: 2019-04-30

"The main objective of COMOTION is to enable novel experiments for the investigation of the intrinsic properties of large molecules, including biological samples like proteins, viruses, and small cells -X-ray free-electron lasers have enabled the observation of near-atomic-resolution structures in diffraction- before-destruction experiments, for instance, of isolated mimiviruses and of proteins from microscopic crystals. The goal to record molecular movies with spatial and temporal atomic-resolution (femtoseconds and picometers) of individual molecules is near. -The investigation of ultrafast, sub-femtosecond electron dynamics in small molecules is providing first results. Its extension to large molecules promises the unraveling of charge migration and energy transport in complex (bio)molecules. -Matter-wave experiments of large molecules, with currently up to some hundred atoms, are testing the limits of quantum mechanics, particle-wave duality, and coherence. These metrology experiments also allow the precise measurement of molecular properties. The principal obstacle for these and similar experiments in molecular sciences is the controlled production of samples of identical molecules in the gas phase. We will develop novel concepts and technologies for the manipulation of complex molecules, ranging from amino acids to proteins, viruses, nano-objects, and small cells: We will implement new methods to inject complex molecules into vacuum, to rapidly cool them, and to manipulate the motion of these cold gas-phase samples using combinations of external electric and electromagnetic fields. These external-field handles enable the spatial separation of molecules according to size, shape, and isomer. The generated controlled samples are ideally suited for the envisioned precision experiments. We will exploit them to record atomic-resolution molecular movies using the European XFEL, as well as to investigate the limits of quantum mechanics using matter-wave interferometry."

1 982 500 €

Start date: 2014-09-01, End date: 2019-08-31

The coherent dynamics of excitons in systems of biological interest and in organic materials can now be studied with advanced experimental techniques, including two dimensional electronic spectroscopy, with time resolution of few femtoseconds. The theory of open quantum systems, that should support the interpretation of these new experiments, has been developed in different contexts over the past 60 years but seems now very inadequate for the problems of current interest. First of all, the systems under investigation are extremely complex and the most common approach, based on the development of phenomenological models, is often not very informative. Many different models yield results in agreement with the experiments and there is no systematic way to derive these models or to select the best model among many. Secondly, the quantum dynamics of excitons is so fast that one cannot assume that the dynamics of environment is much faster than the dynamics of the system, an assumption crucial for most theories. A remedy to the current limitation is proposed here through the following research objectives. (1) A general and automatic protocol will be developed to generate simple treatable models of the system from an accurate atomistic description of the same system based on computational chemistry methods. (2) A professionally-written software will be developed to study the quantum dynamics of model Hamiltonians for excitons in molecular aggregates. This software will incorporate different methodologies and will be designed to be usable also by non-specialists in the theory of quantum open systems (e.g. spectroscopists, computational chemists). (3) A broad number of problems will be studied with this methodology including (i) exciton dynamics in light harvesting complexes and artificial proteins and (ii) exciton dynamics in molecular aggregates of relevance for organic electronics devices.

1 512 873 €

Start date: 2014-04-01, End date: 2019-03-31