ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

The ability to form and store memories allows organisms to learn from the past and imagine the future: it is a crucial mechanism underlying flexible and adaptive behaviour. The aim of this proposal is to identify the circuit mechanisms underlying our ability to learn and remember, by tracking the ontogenesis of memory processing. Importantly, we are not born with a fully functioning memory system: generally, adults cannot recollect any events from before their third birthday (‘infantile amnesia’). There are several accounts as to the source of this mnemonic deficit, each placing emphasis on impairments of specific processes (encoding, consolidation, retrieval). However, a general weakness in the study of memory ontogeny is the lack of neural data describing the activity of memory-related circuits during development. To directly address this knowledge gap, we propose to study the ontogeny of brain-wide hippocampus-centred memory networks in the rat. We will study to which extent memory expression relies on spatial signalling, delineate the role of sleep in memory consolidation, determine how hippocampal planning-related neuronal activity influences memory processing, understand whether the rapid forgetting observed in development is due to interference, and explore interactions between the hippocampus, pre-frontal and striatal circuits in orchestrating memory emergence. We are best placed to deliver this ambitious experimental plan due to our extensive experience of in vivo recording in developing rats which we will couple with the application of recently emerged technologies (2-photon imaging, high density electrophysiology, chemogenetic manipulation of neural activity). As our studies of the development of hippocampal spatial representations have delivered powerful insights into their adult function, we expect the work outlined here to critically advance our understanding not only of development, but also of healthy memory processing in adulthood.

1 999 520 €

Start date: 2020-03-01, End date: 2025-12-31

Wage inequality in industrialised countries has increased sharply over the past decades, and much of this increase has occurred between rather than within firms. Furthermore, substantial inequality between men and women persists in all industrialised countries, and a large part of the gender gaps observed today is attributable to the arrival of children. In this proposal, we put firms at the centre of the analysis and ask the following questions: First, which market forces can (partly) explain the increasing wage inequality between firms? Second, how do government policies alter the wage structure? And third, how do firm policies and the firm environment impact on gender inequality? All projects draw on four decades of German social security records comprising the near universe of workers and establishments, which we augment with survey and administrative data on firms. In Project A, we investigate how two important market forces, increased product market competition and routine-biased technological change, contributed to the increasing wage inequality between firms, by changing which firms operate in the market (selection) and how employment is distributed across low and high productivity firms (reallocation), and by differentially affecting wage growth across firm types (differential wage growth). In Project B, we study how two prominent government policies, the introduction of a minimum wage and changes in business tax rates, affect wage dispersion between firms through selection, reallocation and differential growth effects. In Project C, we first analyse whether firm provided family-friendly policies, most notably flexible working times and child care facilities, can be effective at reducing gender inequality. We then investigate how the firm environment, specifically the presence of co-workers who are likely to have a working mother and hold more egalitarian gender attitudes, shapes mothers’ return-to-work decisions and earnings trajectories after childbirth.

1 491 803 €

Start date: 2019-06-01, End date: 2024-05-31

Understanding (un)willingness to coordinate with others, to compromise when faced with different choices, or to apologize for transgressions is crucial as these behaviors can act as strong facilitators or inhibitors of important interpersonal processes such as negotiations and coalition building. These behaviors play a major role when individuals from different cultural backgrounds work together to solve disputes or address joint challenges. Yet, we know little about what these behaviors mean in different cultural groups or how they are approached. With HONORLOGIC, I aim to initiate a step-change in our understanding of cultural variation in these important domains of social behavior by providing unique, multimethod, comparative and converging evidence from a wide range of cultural groups. I will answer the question “How do cultural groups that promote honor as a core cultural value approach coordinating with others, reaching compromise, and offering apologies?” by integrating insights from social/cultural psychology, behavioral economics, and anthropology. I will do this by collecting quantitative data using economic games, experiments, and surveys from Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Lebanon, Egypt and Tunisia, as cultural groups where honor has been shown to play a defining role in individuals’ social worlds. I will also run the proposed studies in the US, the UK, Japan and Korea to provide a broader comparative perspective. HONORLOGIC will produce transformative evidence for theories of social interaction and decision making in psychology, economics, and evolutionary science by (a) producing innovative theory and data with an interdisciplinary and multi-method approach, (b) increasing the diversity of the existing evidence pool, (c) testing established theoretical assumptions in new cultural groups, and (d) contributing to capacity building in under-researched cultural groups in psychological research.

1 998 694 €

Start date: 2019-09-01, End date: 2024-08-31

Forming memories, generating predictions based on memories, and updating memories when predictions no longer match actual experience are fundamental brain functions. Dopaminergic neurons provide a so-called “teaching signal” that drives the formation and updates of associative memories across the animal kingdom. Many theoretical models propose how neural circuits could compute the teaching signals, but the actual implementation of this computation in real nervous systems is unknown. This project will discover the basic principles by which neural circuits compute the teaching signals that drive memory formation and updates using a tractable insect model system, the Drosophila larva. We will generate, for the first time in any animal, the following essential datasets for a distributed, multilayered, recurrent learning circuit, the mushroom body-related circuitry in the larval brain. First, building on our preliminary work that provides the synaptic-resolution connectome of the circuit, including all feedforward and feedback pathways upstream of all dopaminergic neurons, we will generate a map of functional monosynaptic connections. Second, we will obtain cellular-resolution whole-nervous system activity maps in intact living animals, as they form, extinguish, or consolidate memories to discover the features represented in each layer of the circuit (e.g. predictions, actual reinforcement, and prediction errors), the learning algorithms, and the candidate circuit motifs that implement them. Finally, we will develop a model of the circuit constrained by these datasets and test the predictions about the necessity and sufficiency of uniquely identified circuit elements for implementing learning algorithms by selectively manipulating their activity. Understanding the basic functional principles of an entire multilayered recurrent learning circuit in an animal has the potential to revolutionize, not only neuroscience and medicine, but also machine-learning and robotics.

2 350 000 €

Start date: 2019-09-01, End date: 2024-08-31