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Sanja Bauer Mikulovic, a neuroscientist at the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology (LIN), has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant by the European Research Council. Considered the highest seal of approval for excellent research in Europe, the award supports particularly ambitious projects. This year, the ERC is supporting 478 promising research careers across Europe, one of which is now based in Magdeburg, Germany.
With funding of around 1.5 million euros, Mikulovic plans to spend the next five years researching the connection between thinking and feeling in the brain, and why it sometimes fails. She hypothesises that a lack of empathy could be a neurobiologically solvable problem. If confirmed, this could lead to new perspectives in the long term, including therapies for people with severe empathy disorders such as psychopathy.
“I am driven by the question of why we help each other, and why some people show no empathy. If we understand the brain's circuits, we can find ways to specifically strengthen compassion," says Sanja Bauer Mikulovic.
Her research builds on her own pioneering work. In experiments, her team demonstrated that mice rescue their distressed peers. This activates special nerve cells in the hippocampus, which she refers to as 'liberation cells'. The more often these cells help, the stronger their connections become. This makes helping more likely.
However, around five per cent of the animals never help, a proportion that is reminiscent of people with impaired empathy. This finding formed the basis of the ERC grant that has now been approved.
With this funding, Bauer Mikulovic intends to systematically investigate:
– which circuits in the hippocampus control empathy;
– how cognitive and emotional areas work together;
– how neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine and oxytocin influence helpfulness;
– how empathy is altered in mouse models for autism and psychopathy;
– whether empathy can be strengthened through targeted interventions in nerve cells or neurotransmitter systems.
"Sanja Bauer Mikulovic's ERC project exemplifies what the LIN stands for. We investigate how the brain organises perception, memory and action. Empathy arises precisely from the interaction of these processes, and her research opens up new perspectives in this area," says Stefan Remy, Scientific Director of the LIN, emphasising the success of the project.
The ERC Grant
Only around ten out of every hundred applications for an ERC Starting Grant are approved. This year, 3,928 researchers submitted an application, which is a 13 per cent increase on the previous year. However, only 12 percent of these are funded. Sanja Bauer Mikulovic is now one of the few to have been awarded a grant. “This grant gives me the freedom to explore a question close to my heart: why we help, and why some people don't,” she says.
Sanja.Mikulovic@lin-magdeburg.de
https://www.lin-magdeburg.de/forschung/forschungseinheiten/forschungsgruppe-kogn...
In the lab – here, Sanja Bauer Mikulovic researches the circuits of empathy in the brain.
Source: Tobias Kruse
Copyright: Tobias Kruse / OSTKREUZ
Sanja Bauer Mikulovic, awarded the ERC Starting Grant 2025
Source: Tobias Kruse
Copyright: Tobias Kruse / OSTKREUZ
Short Bio of Sanja Bauer Mikulovic
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In the lab – here, Sanja Bauer Mikulovic researches the circuits of empathy in the brain.
Source: Tobias Kruse
Copyright: Tobias Kruse / OSTKREUZ
Sanja Bauer Mikulovic, awarded the ERC Starting Grant 2025
Source: Tobias Kruse
Copyright: Tobias Kruse / OSTKREUZ
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