Speaker of the DZNE site Magdeburg awarded with research prize

Bonn/Magdeburg, November 23rd, 2011. Today Professor Emrah Düzel received the 2011 research prize granted by Otto-von-Guericke University at a ceremony commemorating the birthday of the university’s namesake. Awarded only once a year, the university honours her outstanding scientists and their excellent research.

Professor Düzel, the speaker of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Magdeburg and the director of the Institute for Cognitive Neurology and Dementia Research, studies the mechanisms and functional disorders of human memory and motor skills. As the prize committee noted, Düzel is the first person to show a physiological link between long-term memory and reward motivation in humans. In addition to discovering the underlying encoding principles of memories, Düzel also devised a novel long-term memory model to describe the role of the neurotransmitter dopamine for enduring plasticity in long-term memory. 

Düzel’s work on brain plasticity and memory encoding demonstrates for the first time that memories are periodically reactivated in the human mind. This research enables the identification of memories in brain activity at a high temporal resolution, thus opening up new pathways for investigating memory functions and their disorders.

Düzel earned his PhD in Bonn at the Clinic for Epileptology and finished his MD in 2001 at the University of Magdeburg. His research has taken him to, among other places, the University of California at Davis, the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto and University College London. He directs the University of Magdeburg’s Institute for Cognitive Neurology and Dementia Research, and since 2011 has served as speaker for the DZNE site Magdeburg.

The DZNE site Magdeburg cooperates closes with the University of Magdeburg, its clinics, and the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology. Its main focus lies in developing systematic approaches to degenerative dementia. Combing multiple disciplines, the Magdeburg DZNE investigates the mechanisms of and therapeutic approaches to neuromodulation. In addition, it is currently working together with the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt to develop a health care program for dementia.  

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