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Dr. Gordon Feld, scientist at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, has received a prestigious award from the European Research Council (ERC) for his research into memory processing during sleep using state-of-the-art imaging techniques. The ERC Consolidator Grant provides funding of around two million euros over a period of five years.
Like a diligent student, the brain rehearses what it has learned previously during subsequent sleep. This consolidates the memory and links newly learned information with old knowledge, thus transforming it. Despite enormous progress, this finding has not yet been used to improve mental health, although sleep and memory problems contribute significantly to suffering in almost all mental illnesses. The European Research Council (ERC) is now funding the project “Tracking memory during sleep: understanding how replay of complex information affects memory and mental health” (MemoryTracker), which addresses precisely this issue. Led by Dr. Gordon Feld, head of the research group in the Department of Clinical Psychology at the Central Institute of Mental Health (CIMH) in Mannheim, the funded project combines state-of-the-art imaging techniques, such as high-field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), to directly observe the processing of memory content during sleep and measure the resulting changes.
“If we understand how the brain processes the complex content we experience on a daily basis during sleep, we can use this knowledge to intervene in processing of maladadptive memory during sleep,” says Gordon Feld, who has been using the Emmy Noether funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the CIMH to investigate the connection between sleep and addictive memory. The ERC Consolidator Grant for the MemoryTracker project provides funding of around two million euros over a period of five years.
Direct measurement of memory processing
Sleep and memory research has made considerable progress over the past two decades, but this has largely been achieved with the help of relatively simple learning tasks. A decisive innovation in the funded project is the learning material: Instead of the word pairs or word lists often used in the past, subjects learn the complex relationships of a network consisting of emotionally relevant images. This task is designed to capture complex memory content in the laboratory that is similar to that in real life.
“To understand what the brain does during sleep, we have to give it a task that is similar to what we experience every day,” says Gordon Feld. What's more: Only this learning task makes it possible to use imaging techniques to find out exactly what the brain does with complex memory content during sleep. The structure of the task is chosen in such a way that a fingerprint of the learning content can be created using mathematical methods and artificial intelligence.
On the one hand, the funded project will work with healthy participants in order to gain a fundamental understanding of memory processes during sleep. On the other hand, key questions will also be tested with depressed people in order to find new treatment approaches as quickly as possible. “In the long term, we want to use the fingerprints we have created of emotional memory processing to influence memory in a positive way and thus promote mental health,” says Gordon Feld.
Already the fourth ongoing ERC grant for the CIMH
Dr. Gordon Feld's ERC Consolidator Grant is already the second high-ranking grant from the European Research Council that the CIMH has been able to acquire this year in highly competitive procedures. In April, Prof. Dr. Herta Flor was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant. The CIMH currently has a total of four ongoing ERC Grants, which are among the highest awards available in science; in addition to Gordon Feld and Herta Flor, the CIMH scientists Prof. Dr. Valery Grinevich (Synergy Grant) and Prof. Dr. Dr. Hannelore Ehrenreich (Advanced Grant) have also received ERC funding.
The European Research Council is the most important European funding organization for excellent frontier research. The funding is one of the most prestigious and competitive in Europe. The chance of being funded is less than ten percent. The ERC's total budget for the period 2021 to 2027 amounts to more than 16 billion euros. The funding is part of the EU's Horizon Europe program.
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