Attempto Award for Roxana Zeraati

The Attempto Award of the Universitätsbund Tübingen is awarded bi-annually to junior scientists for  exceptional research on the neural basics of brain performance and their disorders. One of this year's two prizewinners is Roxana Zeraati, who was honored for her publication on the processing of visual information in the brain on different time scales.

Roxana Zeraati is doing her doctoral research at the Graduate Training Center of Neuroscience at the University of Tübingen and at the International Max Planck Research School for the Mechanisms of Mental Function and Dysfunction. Her prize-winning publication deals with information processing in the brain over different time scales, which enable humans and animals to survive in a dynamic environment. Perceiving an immediate danger in the environment, for instance, requires a quick response. Sensory information, on the other hand, must be integrated over a longer period of time in order to efficiently perform higher-order tasks like decision-making and planning. Scientists believe that these different time scales of information processing are encoded in corresponding time scales of neural activity fluctuations in the brain.

In the award-winning study, Zeraati and her team investigated how the timescales of neural activity fluctuations correspond to the processing of visual information when attention is focused on a particular point in space. To do this, they used data obtained in experiments with monkeys at Stanford University and Newcastle University. The monkeys were given spatial attention tasks while their brain activity was recorded. Zeraati and her colleagues found that long and short time scales were simultaneously present in the neural dynamics, but only the long time scale was adapted to the attentional states. When the monkeys focused their attention on certain visual stimuli, the long time scales became longer, which correlated with a shorter reaction time of the monkeys.
In order to understand the mechanisms of such adaptations, the research team developed computer models that depicted various aspects of the brain's cellular and network properties. The researchers found that the long timescales of neural activity are shaped by how neurons are connected and how they interact. When the interactions are enhanced, the brain can process information over long timescales. This seems to be relevant for the processing of visual information during attention. The study showcases how the integration of experiments and computer models in neuroscience helps to better understand the connection between brain structures, brain functions, and flexible behavior.

The Attempto Foundation also honored Matthias Baumann, who is doing his doctorate at the Werner Reichardt Center for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN), the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research and the Department of Biology at the University of Tübingen. He was awarded the Attempto Prize for a studywhich re-evaluates the role of a specific brain region, the superior colliculus, in the control of rapid eye movements.

The Attempto Prize was founded in 1983 by the psychiatrist Konrad Ernst and his wife Dorothea. It is awarded to young researchers from Tübingen in the field of neuroscience. The prizes are endowed with 5,000 euros each and were presented as part of the Dies Universitatis ceremony at the University of Tübingen on October 16 in Alte Aula.