February 23, 2010, Updated September 24, 2012

A €1.6 million grant for brain and memory research has been awarded to a group of scientists from Israel and Germany by DIP, a German-Israeli Project Cooperation.

The grant, to be awarded over a five-year period, will fund new research that will attempt to reveal additional knowledge about the brain processes that enable us to form long-term memory and to absorb information to create new memories. The scientists will use imaging technology and advanced biochemical and molecular processes in their research.

“This research is of dual significance: on the one hand, we will be able to gain a better understanding of how and why emotive memory can become so deeply engraved, such as in cases of psychiatric disturbance related to post traumatic syndrome. On the other hand, we will also be able to better observe how and why the ability to create and preserve new memories can be lost, such as in neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease,” explains Prof. Kobi Rosenblum of the University of Haifa.

The international research into the role of protein expression in memory formation and stability is being conducted by Rosenblum along with Prof. Noam Ziv at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Dr. Michael Kreutz, Dr. Daniela C. Dieterich and Prof. Eckart Gundelfinger of Magdeburg University in Germany.

 

Read more: