Press releases

Optimal windows exist for action and perception between the two consecutive heart beats, according to a study published in PLOS Biology by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig. The sequence of heart contraction and relaxation is linked to changes in the motor system and its ability to respond to stimulation, and this could have implications for treatment of depression and stroke.  
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"I'll have another coffee!" During an everyday conversation, listeners need to quickly and efficiently extract different types of information from what is being said in order to understand the message being conveyed. The complex process of language processing is controlled by the interaction between widely distributed regions in the brain. But how exactly do the processes in our language network work? In a multi-part study, Joëlle Schroën and her colleagues at the MPI CBS have found evidence of coordinated temporal interaction within the human language network.
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One of the most important human abilities is to understand what other people are thinking. The perspective of others seems to influence us even when it is completely irrelevant to us. Katrin Rothmaler and Charlotte Grosse Wiesmann from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig (MPI CBS) have now investigated in a study to what extent the perspective of others actually influences our thinking subliminally.
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The human brain is not fully developed at birth. Above all, it is still quite slow. Rapid brain activity, and thus the ability to process fast signals, only matures in the first years of life. In a study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig (MPI CBS) have shown for the first time that the slowness of the baby brain is crucial for the course of language acquisition.
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Central learning and memory hubs change in response to sex hormones. A new study in Nature Mental Health by Rachel Zsido and Julia Sacher of MPI CBS and the University of Leipzig Medical Center links rhythmic oscillations in ovarian hormone levels in women during the menstrual cycle to changes in brain structure.
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Language is one aspect that makes us human. Other animals can learn words or calls and communicate, but the ability to generate an infinite number of utterances based on a small number of syntactic rules is unique to humans. A team of researchers led by Angela Friederici from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig, together with scientists from the Universities of Texas and Washington (USA), have now published a study in the journal PLOS Biology in which they directly compared the region in the human brain responsible for language with its homologous region in the chimpanzee brain using MRI data. The study shows that the area responsible for syntactic processes in humans is the result of a large expansion in the left hemisphere. Such expansion of Broca’s area in the brain during the course of evolution could be the root of humans' ability to speak.
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Autism is a complex and multifaceted neurodevelopmental condition. Often, people with autism have altered information and perceptual processing in the brain, which alters the development of social interaction, communication and behavioural repertoires. Thus, compared to non-autistic individuals, they show subtle changes in the asymmetry of the brain structure and a lower laterality of functional activation, in terms of the use of the left or right hemisphere in the brain. Bin Wan and Sofie Valk from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig and Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany), together with international researchers from South Korea, UK, Switzerland, and Canada, have now investigated in a study whether such functional asymmetries in autism are indicative of altered systematic organisation in the brain in general.
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Using a novel approach of precision neuroimaging and high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), neuroscientists and physicists at MPI CBS in Leipzig (Germany) and anatomist Menno Witter from the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience in Trondheim (Norway) have now ventured into the depths of the human memory system. They discovered previously unknown cortical networks and shed light on the anatomical organization of the human memory system. Their findings were recently published in the prestigious journal "Neuron".
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Lara Puhlmann and Esra Al, this year’s winners of the Otto Hahn Medal. more

Our mental health and that of our cardiovascular system have a complex interaction. A recent study from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig, Germany, now shows the links between higher blood pressure and depressive symptoms, well-being and emotion-related brain activity that may be relevant to the development of hypertension.
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