ERC Consolidator Grant to Natalia Goriounova

The European Research Council (ERC) awarded neuroscientist Natalia Goriounova a Consolidator Grant for the HumanCircuits project. Goriounova will study neurons in living tissue from the human brain.

What makes us human? Detailed cellular maps of the entire human

An international team of neuroscientists under leadership of Ed Lein and Hongkui Zeng worked on studies to map the cell types that make up the human brain. VU scientists Natalia Goriounova, Christiaan de Kock and Huib Mansvelder and their teams also contributed to this together with neurosurgeons from the VUmc.

Precision medicine boosted by TKI grant to N=You center

With 750 kEUR funding from TKI, Hilgo Bruining and Klaus Linkenkaer-Hansen have teamed up with the company Clouds of Care in a public-private partnership to accelerate research and implementation of EEG analysis for precision medicine in patients with epilepsy or children with a neurodevelopmental disorder like autism.

Fast neural computation at the basis of cognition

The speed at which the human brain processes information is higher than in other animal species. Neuroscientist René Wilbers discovered that by examining millions of brain cells collected from a live sample of brain tissue.

ERC Advanced grant awarded to Huib Mansvelder

Huib Mansvelder, professor and head of the department of Integrative Neurophysiology at VU Amsterdam, received the prestigious European Research Council Advanced Grant this week. This is the largest personal research grant in Europe.

CNCR researchers receive funding for Brain Initiative

The American National Institute of Health will fund new brain research of three CNCR researchers at VU Amsterdam through the so-called Brain Initiative programme. Brain research is desperately needed to better understand and treat brain diseases.

Three CNCR TenureTrackers rewarded permanent employment contract

The performance of CNCR researchers Rachel Brouwer, Loek van der Kallen and Mahesh Karnani has been evaluated positively and we are happy to announce that they are rewarded a permanent employment contract.

NeuroData – VU Amsterdam and partner universities receive 3.6M€

The new joint degree program (linked to the Master of Neurosciences program at BETA-CNCR & VUmc) receives 6-year funding from the European Erasmus Mundus program of Erasmus+.

Three CNCR researchers each awarded a VIDI grant

Rik van der Kant, Natalia Goriounova and Priyanka Rao-Ruiz, researchers at the Center for Neurogenomics & Cognitive Research at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, have been awarded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) with a Vidi grant worth 800,000 euros.

Dr. Christiaan de Kock awarded Open Competition ENW-M grant

Dr. Christiaan de Kock awarded Open Competition ENW-M-2 grant (700k€) to study multisensory processing in primary visual cortex.

Burst spiking encodes exploratory whisker touch

Teams at the VU Amsterdam, Heidelberg University, Center of Advanced European Studies and Research (Bonn) and Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology (Martinsried) achieve next step in understanding how sensory information is represented across different cell-types of primary somatosensory (barrel) cortex of behaving rats. Their findings were published in Communications Biology.

From critical brain dynamics to E/I heterogeneity in autism

The group of Klaus Linkenkaer-Hansen (INF) established a method to estimate excitation/inhibition balance using the theory of critical brain dynamics. By teaming up with the group of Hilgo Bruining (Amsterdam UMC), the method is validated for physiological stratification of autism spectrum disorder.

Sonja Simpraga thesis defense at June 26

Biomarker integration for better clinical decision making

State-dependent processing requires critical brain dynamics

Arthur-Ervin Avramiea, Richard Hardstone and colleagues from the team of Klaus Linkenkaer-Hansen (INF) publish in eLife that pre-stimulus phase and amplitude regulation of stimulus processing is maximized when neuronal networks operate in the critical state.

Roel de Haan thesis defense at November 15 in the aula of the VU

Tim Kroon thesis defense at September 10 in the aula of the VU

Development and modulation of mouse and human cortical circuitry

Brains of smarter people have bigger and faster brain cells

Natalia Goriounova published the association between large human pyramidal neurons that generate fast action potentials and intelligence in eLIFE

Lateral inhibition in human cortex study in Nature Communication

Joshua Obermayer and Tim Heistek publish their study on cholinergic regulation of lateral inhibition in human and mouse cortex in Nature Communications

Vidi grant awarded to Rogier Min

Causes and consequences of disturbed brain ion and water homeostasis in the white matter disease MLC

Amber Kerkhof’s thesis defense

Caffeine, adenosine and acetylcholine and neuronal function in the cortex, June 26, 2018

Ioannis Kramvis thesis defense

Inhibition in executive function neurocircuits in an autism model, and human neocortex, June 14, 2018

Astrocyte defect causes seizures in the white matter disease MLC

Collaboration between CNCR and VUmc published in Annals of Neurology

Oscillatory dynamics relates to accelerated speech comprehension

Filipa Teixeira Borges publishes her findings in Journal of Neuroscience

ERA-NET Neuron grant for Huib Mansvelder

A functional dissection of human nicotinic receptor polymorphisms linked to
addiction and schizophrenia

Metro news item on Amber Kerkhof’s paper

The Metro Newspaper reports on Amber’s findings

Caffeine’s effects on human cortical networks in Frontiers

Caffeine Controls Glutamatergic Synaptic Transmission and Pyramidal Neuron Excitability in Human Neocortex

Adrian Negrean’s thesis defense

Optical Methods in Dendritic Physiology, December 22nd, 2017

Mohit Dubey thesis defense November 14th

Water and ion homeostasis in the developing brain: disease models impacting understanding of physiology

First sub-types of pyramidal neurons in human neocortex revealed

Teams at the VU Amsterdam, EPFL and Hebrew University of Jerusalem achieve next step in disentangling the neuronal circuitry in human neocortex.

NIH Brain Initiative grant with Allen Institute

Huib Mansvelder and his team receive 1.25 million dollar from the NIH for their research on human brain cells.

Hemanth Mohan’s thesis defense

Organizational Principles of Human and Rodent Neocortex, March 20, 2017

Thijs Verhoog’s paper in Nature Communications

First description of cholinergic modulation of long-term plasticity in human neocortex

Barrel Cortex Function Meeting

On the 19th and 20th of May, our lab hosted the BACOFUN 2016 meeting with renowned keynote speakers including profs. Gordon Fishell, Adam Kepecs, Moritz Helmstaedter, Michael Stryker, Anthony Holtmaat, David Kleinfeld and Josh Huang.

Nature Communications paper on AMPA-R auxiliary subunit Shisa6

Remco Klaassen’s and Jasper Stroeder’s work on the AMPA receptor auxiliary subunit Shisa6 appeared in Nature Communications

Human pyramidal neurons are 3 times larger than mouse and monkey

Hemanth Mohan and Thijs Verhoog published their paper reporting the first full quantitative neuronal morphologies of human pyramidal neurons including dendrites as well as axons.

Two papers in Cerebral Cortex

Christiaan de Kock, Huib Mansvelder and collaborators publish two papers in Cerebral Cortex on the organizational principles of cortex in rat and human.

Grant to theory of critical brain dynamics

The 4-year PhD project is funded by a grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (MaGW, NWO) to Klaus Linkenkaer-Hansen and "Research Talent" Arthur-Ervin Avramiea.

Novel role for Fragile X protein in the embryonic brain

In a collaboration between researchers at KU Leuven and the Meredith group at the CNCR, a recent article in Nature Neuroscience shows developmental delays in cortical brain development prior to birth in a mouse model of the most common inherited form of intellectual disability and autism disorder, Fragile X syndrome.