Brain plasticity is the lifelong ability of the brain to reorganize neural pathways based on new experiences and ongoing changes in our environment. The scientific focus of the Department is on plastic changes in the human brain after stroke: a process mandatory for successful rehabilitation. To understand basic mechanisms involved in such restorative processes, our interest expands into brain function in healthy humans.

In co-operation with the Clinic for Cognitive Neurology at the University of Leipzig, we investigate plastic processes during rehabilitation after brain injury, and specifically after stroke. To better understand the mechanisms leading to partial or complete recovery, it is mandatory to understand basic processes of neuronal plasticity on a more general level reaching into basic mechanisms of adaptation and learning in healthy humans. Beyond the development of potential strategies to initiate and support plastic processes during stroke recovery, there is an emphasis on identifying predictive parameters for successful rehabilitation. Such parameters are scrutinized in different phases of recovery, starting in the acute, and extending to chronic phases. With the perspective of new therapeutic strategies, interventional studies are performed to induce “beneficial” plasticity which supports stroke restoration and rehabilitation. For this purpose, new training methods, non-invasive brain stimulation, peripheral tactile stimulation, and drug intervention are tested and applied in isolation and in combination. We are using neuroimaging to precisely define brain lesions and to monitor progress of functional plasticity in patients and healthy humans.

Our research will predominantly investigate the tactile, motor, and language system, thereby potentially addressing the most relevant functions in daily life of patients after stroke. Principally training methods, non-invasive brain stimulation, and drugs may be beneficial in all these systems, and we also assess their influence on brain function in healthy adults over their lifespan.

Our Department is embedded in the Max Planck Institute, and tight cooperation with all other Departments offers the possibility to combine broad synergistic expertise with language, motor, and tactile research. Studies on underlying physiology, as well as studies on patients with lesions at different locations within these brain systems, will help to improve our understanding of motor performance, tactile perception, and language processing. These studies will be complemented by an assessment of genetic influences on brain plasticity.