Press releases

We know this from sport or rehabilitation: if you imagine a movement and practise it with the corresponding kinaesthetic feeling in your head, you can often improve your performance. Magdalena Gippert, Arno Villringer, Bernhard Sehm and Vadim Nikulin from MPI CBS in Leipzig have now investigated whether imagining just a part of a motor sequence is sufficient to support the learning of the entire movement. They used an exoskeleton robot to measure the motor learning of the study participants. The results of the study now published in PNAS could, among other things, help to improve the recovery of motor skills after a stroke through targeted imagination training.
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Language processing in humans depends on the neuronal connection between language areas in the brain. Until recently, this language network was thought to be uniquely human. Now, in a discovery about the evolutionary basis of our language, researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Alfred Wegener Institute, have identified a comparable neuronal connection in the brains of chimpanzees. Their findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.
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How are the relations between different action plans organized and structured in the brain to support our rich behavioural repertoire? Irina Barnaveli and Christian Doeller together with Simone Viganò and Daniel Reznik from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and with Patrick Haggard from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, argue in their recent study that the brain organizes action-outcome associations in a cognitive map-like structure. The researchers further demonstrate in their study, published in Nature Communications, that these cognitive maps, located in the hippocampal system, communicate with the motor system during action evaluation, suggesting that goal-directed action planning skills rely on multiple neural systems.
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Alongside Alzheimer's disease, changes to the brain's vascular system are the most common cause of dementia. So-called white matter lesions are indications of tiny vascular damage in the brain and can be measured in an MRI scan. They are very common in older people and are linked, for example, to slower thinking in everyday life. Using data from over 2,800 study participants over the age of 65, Frauke Beyer from MPI CBS in Leipzig, Germany, and Stephanie Debette from the University of Bordeaux in France investigated where such lesions occur in the brain, which factors favour their occurrence and how they are linked to stroke and dementia.
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In his new science communication book, which will be published by mvg-Verlag on April 14, 2025, Michael Skeide sheds light on how brain research debunks the biggest misconceptions and how we can really learn better. more

Did you know that a woman’s heartbeat subtly changes across her menstrual cycle? These rhythmic changes, driven by hormonal fluctuations, offer a unique window into the intricate connection between the female brain and heart. In a new Paper published in Science Advances, Max Planck researchers Jellina Prinsen, Julia Sacher and Arno Villringer outline how these naturally occurring variations might influence stress, mood, and long-term cardiovascular and neurological health.
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The evolution of language in humans, in contrast to communicative systems in other primate species is hotly debated. Now, thanks to the study of brain connectivity between different primate species and by adopting a framework proposed for segregating functional language and communication activation in humans, Angela Friederici and Yannick Becker from MPI CBS argue in a recent correspondence article in Nature Reviews Neuroscience that the core language network can be neurally separated from other communication-relevant networks during primate evolution.
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Bin Wan and Sofie Valk from MPI CBS together with colleagues from Research Center Jülich, Montréal Neurological Institute and Hospital, and University of Cambridge describe in their recently published study in Nature Communications to what extend the anatomy of the human cortex is different between left and right, at the finest scale to date. Moreover, they describe that microstructural asymmetry of the brain is heritable and corresponds to asymmetry of brain function at rest. And they demonstrate to what extend individuals show differences in brain structure between the left and right hemispheres related to inter-individual variability in language-related skills such as reading and mental health, such as anxiety.
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Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig (MPI CBS) have developed a novel, non-invasive method to record electrical activity in the human spinal cord with high precision and sensitivity. The reactions of the spinal cord to pain stimuli can also be measured more accurately, which could open up new avenues for pain research and potential clinical applications. The study was recently published in the journal PLOS Biology.

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When we open our eyes, it is very easy for us to see the different objects, people and animals around us. Traditionally, the dominant view in research has been that a central goal of our perception is to recognize objects and assign them to different categories - for example, is this object we see a dog and do dogs belong to the category of animals. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig and the Justus Liebig University Giessen in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health in the USA have now shown that this view is incomplete. In a recent study in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, they demonstrate that brain activity when seeing objects can be much better explained by a variety of behaviorally relevant dimensions.
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