Project acronym BRAIN2BRAIN
Project Towards two-person neuroscience
Researcher (PI) Riitta Kyllikki Hari
Host Institution (HI) AALTO KORKEAKOULUSAATIO SR
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), LS5, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary Humans interact with other people throughout their lives. This project aims to demonstrate that the complex social shaping of the human brain can be adequately tackled only by taking a leap from the conven-tional single-person neuroscience to two-person neuroscience. We will (1) develop a conceptual framework and experimental setups for two-person neuroscience, (2) apply time-sensitive methods for studies of two interacting persons, monitoring both brain and autonomic nervous activity to also cover the brain body connection, (3) use gaze as an index of subject s attention to simplify signal analysis in natural environments, and (4) apply insights from two-person neuroscience into disorders of social interaction. Brain activity will be recorded with millisecond-accurate whole-scalp (306-channel) magnetoencepha-lography (MEG), associated with EEG, and with the millimeter-accurate 3-tesla functional magnetic reso-nance imaging (fMRI). Heart rate, respiration, galvanic skin response, and pupil diameter inform about body function. A new psychophysiological interaction setting will be built, comprising a two-person eye-tracking system. Novel analysis methods will be developed to follow the interaction and possible synchronization of the two persons signals. This uncoventional approach crosses borders of neuroscience, social psychology, psychophysiology, psychiatry, medical imaging, and signal analysis, with intriguing connections to old philosophical questions, such as intersubjectivity and emphatic attunement. The results could open an unprecedented window into human human, instead of just brain brain, interactions, helping to understand also social disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia. Further applications include master apprentice and patient therapist relationships. Advancing from studies of single persons towards two-person neuroscience shows promise of a break-through in understanding the dynamic social shaping of human brain and mind.
Summary
Humans interact with other people throughout their lives. This project aims to demonstrate that the complex social shaping of the human brain can be adequately tackled only by taking a leap from the conven-tional single-person neuroscience to two-person neuroscience. We will (1) develop a conceptual framework and experimental setups for two-person neuroscience, (2) apply time-sensitive methods for studies of two interacting persons, monitoring both brain and autonomic nervous activity to also cover the brain body connection, (3) use gaze as an index of subject s attention to simplify signal analysis in natural environments, and (4) apply insights from two-person neuroscience into disorders of social interaction. Brain activity will be recorded with millisecond-accurate whole-scalp (306-channel) magnetoencepha-lography (MEG), associated with EEG, and with the millimeter-accurate 3-tesla functional magnetic reso-nance imaging (fMRI). Heart rate, respiration, galvanic skin response, and pupil diameter inform about body function. A new psychophysiological interaction setting will be built, comprising a two-person eye-tracking system. Novel analysis methods will be developed to follow the interaction and possible synchronization of the two persons signals. This uncoventional approach crosses borders of neuroscience, social psychology, psychophysiology, psychiatry, medical imaging, and signal analysis, with intriguing connections to old philosophical questions, such as intersubjectivity and emphatic attunement. The results could open an unprecedented window into human human, instead of just brain brain, interactions, helping to understand also social disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia. Further applications include master apprentice and patient therapist relationships. Advancing from studies of single persons towards two-person neuroscience shows promise of a break-through in understanding the dynamic social shaping of human brain and mind.
Max ERC Funding
2 489 643 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-01-01, End date: 2014-12-31
Project acronym ERERE
Project Between Restoration and Revolution, National Constitutions and Global Law: an Alternative View on the European Century 1815-1914
Researcher (PI) Bo Stråth
Host Institution (HI) HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary The point of departure of this project is that a good part of the present deficit of legitimacy of European institutions emerges from a deeply ahistoric view of Europe s past. Consequently, there is an urgent need for a more realistic history that rejects any teleological understanding of Europe as a self-propelling project on steady march towards a predetermined goal. The fragility of European peace and progress needs to be highlighted. The theoretical foundation of Europe in teleological modernisation and globalisation theories has lead to a-historical understandings of Europe s past that disturb our ability to plan for its future. Our realistic outline of Europe s past focuses on the century 1815-1914, which was the pre-war historical ground on which the peace of 1945 and our present conception of Europe were built. It testifies at least as much to conflict and fragility as to progress. The century is traversed by a series of tensions in the political, cultural, social, economic and legal fields and struggles between the protagonists of different conceptions of European modernity. The legal and political basis for a new European order established in the Vienna Treaty, called the European concert, opened an era that lasted until 1914 in which wars in Europe decreased, whereas the number of civil wars increased and the Revolution came to no end. The tensions were articulated in different geopolitical strategies, constitutional conceptions, prescriptions for economic efficiency and claims for social protection, and alternating views of the meaning of Europe. In one way or the other, they all dealt with the interactive dynamics between politics and law, nationally as well as internationally. These interactive dynamics were also visible in the permanent movement between search for and expectations of stability and experiences of fragility. The aim is to explore the tensions in deep detail and on that basis build an alternative historical view on Europe.
Summary
The point of departure of this project is that a good part of the present deficit of legitimacy of European institutions emerges from a deeply ahistoric view of Europe s past. Consequently, there is an urgent need for a more realistic history that rejects any teleological understanding of Europe as a self-propelling project on steady march towards a predetermined goal. The fragility of European peace and progress needs to be highlighted. The theoretical foundation of Europe in teleological modernisation and globalisation theories has lead to a-historical understandings of Europe s past that disturb our ability to plan for its future. Our realistic outline of Europe s past focuses on the century 1815-1914, which was the pre-war historical ground on which the peace of 1945 and our present conception of Europe were built. It testifies at least as much to conflict and fragility as to progress. The century is traversed by a series of tensions in the political, cultural, social, economic and legal fields and struggles between the protagonists of different conceptions of European modernity. The legal and political basis for a new European order established in the Vienna Treaty, called the European concert, opened an era that lasted until 1914 in which wars in Europe decreased, whereas the number of civil wars increased and the Revolution came to no end. The tensions were articulated in different geopolitical strategies, constitutional conceptions, prescriptions for economic efficiency and claims for social protection, and alternating views of the meaning of Europe. In one way or the other, they all dealt with the interactive dynamics between politics and law, nationally as well as internationally. These interactive dynamics were also visible in the permanent movement between search for and expectations of stability and experiences of fragility. The aim is to explore the tensions in deep detail and on that basis build an alternative historical view on Europe.
Max ERC Funding
2 500 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-09-01, End date: 2014-08-31
Project acronym MITO BY-PASS
Project Molecular by-pass therapy for mitochondrial dysfunction
Researcher (PI) Howard Trevor Jacobs
Host Institution (HI) TAMPEREEN YLIOPISTO
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), LS4, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary Many eukaryotes, but not the higher metazoans such as vertebrates or arthropods, possess intrinsic by-pass systems that provide alternative routes for electron flow from NADH to oxygen. Whereas the standard mitochondrial OXPHOS system couples electron transport to proton pumping across the inner mitochondrial membrane, creating the proton gradient which is used to drive ATP synthesis and other energy-requiring processes, the by-pass enzymes are non-proton-pumping, and their activity is redox-regulated rather than subject to ATP requirements. My laboratory has engineered two of these by-pass enzymes, the single-subunit NADH dehydrogenase Ndi1p from yeast, and the alternative oxidase AOX from Ciona intestinalis, for expression in Drosophila and mammalian cells. Their expression is benign, and the enzymes appear to be almost inert, except under conditions of redox stress induced by OXPHOS toxins or mutations. The research set out in this proposal will explore the utility of these by-passes for alleviating metabolic stress in the whole organism and in specific tissues, arising from mitochondrial OXPHOS dysfunction. Specifically, I will test the ability of Ndi1p and AOX in Drosophila and in mammalian models to compensate for the toxicity of OXPHOS poisons, to complement disease-equivalent mutations impairing the assembly or function of the OXPHOS system, and to diminish the pathological excess production of reactive oxygen species seen in many neurodegenerative disorders associated with OXPHOS impairment, and under conditions of ischemia-reperfusion. The attenuation of endogenous mitochondrial ROS production by deployment of these by-pass enzymes also offers a novel route to testing the mitochondrial (oxyradical) theory of ageing.
Summary
Many eukaryotes, but not the higher metazoans such as vertebrates or arthropods, possess intrinsic by-pass systems that provide alternative routes for electron flow from NADH to oxygen. Whereas the standard mitochondrial OXPHOS system couples electron transport to proton pumping across the inner mitochondrial membrane, creating the proton gradient which is used to drive ATP synthesis and other energy-requiring processes, the by-pass enzymes are non-proton-pumping, and their activity is redox-regulated rather than subject to ATP requirements. My laboratory has engineered two of these by-pass enzymes, the single-subunit NADH dehydrogenase Ndi1p from yeast, and the alternative oxidase AOX from Ciona intestinalis, for expression in Drosophila and mammalian cells. Their expression is benign, and the enzymes appear to be almost inert, except under conditions of redox stress induced by OXPHOS toxins or mutations. The research set out in this proposal will explore the utility of these by-passes for alleviating metabolic stress in the whole organism and in specific tissues, arising from mitochondrial OXPHOS dysfunction. Specifically, I will test the ability of Ndi1p and AOX in Drosophila and in mammalian models to compensate for the toxicity of OXPHOS poisons, to complement disease-equivalent mutations impairing the assembly or function of the OXPHOS system, and to diminish the pathological excess production of reactive oxygen species seen in many neurodegenerative disorders associated with OXPHOS impairment, and under conditions of ischemia-reperfusion. The attenuation of endogenous mitochondrial ROS production by deployment of these by-pass enzymes also offers a novel route to testing the mitochondrial (oxyradical) theory of ageing.
Max ERC Funding
2 436 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-04-01, End date: 2015-03-31
Project acronym MPOES
Project Mathematical Physics of Out-of-Equilibrium Systems
Researcher (PI) Antti Jukka Kupiainen
Host Institution (HI) HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE1, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary The purpose of the project is to develop new tools for a mathematical analysis of out of equilibrium systems. My main goal is a rigorous proof of Fourier's law for a Hamiltonian dynamical system. In addition I plan to study various fundamental problems related to transport in such systems. I will consider extended dynamical systems consisting of a large number (possibly infinite) of subsystems that are coupled to each other. This set includes discrete and continuous wave equations, non-linear Schrödinger equation and coupled chaotic systems. I believe mathematical progress can be made in two cases: weakly nonlinear systems and strongly chaotic ones. In the former class I propose to study the kinetic limit and corrections to it, anomalous conductivity in low dimensional systems, interplay of disorder and nonlinearity and weak turbulence. In the latter class my goal is to prove Fourier's law. The methods will involve a map of the Hamiltonian problem to a probabilistic one dealing with random walk in a random environment and an application of rigorous renormalization group to study the latter. I believe the time is ripe for a breakthrough in a rigorous analysis of transport in systems with conservation laws. A proof of Fourier's law would be a major development in mathematical physics and would remove blocks from progress in other fundamental issues of non equilibrium dynamics. I have previously solved hard problems using the methods proposed in this proposal and feel myself to be in a good position to carry out its goals.
Summary
The purpose of the project is to develop new tools for a mathematical analysis of out of equilibrium systems. My main goal is a rigorous proof of Fourier's law for a Hamiltonian dynamical system. In addition I plan to study various fundamental problems related to transport in such systems. I will consider extended dynamical systems consisting of a large number (possibly infinite) of subsystems that are coupled to each other. This set includes discrete and continuous wave equations, non-linear Schrödinger equation and coupled chaotic systems. I believe mathematical progress can be made in two cases: weakly nonlinear systems and strongly chaotic ones. In the former class I propose to study the kinetic limit and corrections to it, anomalous conductivity in low dimensional systems, interplay of disorder and nonlinearity and weak turbulence. In the latter class my goal is to prove Fourier's law. The methods will involve a map of the Hamiltonian problem to a probabilistic one dealing with random walk in a random environment and an application of rigorous renormalization group to study the latter. I believe the time is ripe for a breakthrough in a rigorous analysis of transport in systems with conservation laws. A proof of Fourier's law would be a major development in mathematical physics and would remove blocks from progress in other fundamental issues of non equilibrium dynamics. I have previously solved hard problems using the methods proposed in this proposal and feel myself to be in a good position to carry out its goals.
Max ERC Funding
1 293 687 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-03-01, End date: 2014-02-28
