2023 - Preisträger

The Schilling Research Award of the German Neuroscience Society 2023 was bestowed on Lukas Groschner, Project Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence in Martinsried.

Nervous systems are thought to derive much of their computational power from the arithmetic operations performed at the level of single nerve cells. To understand how information is processed within complex neural circuits, it is necessary to know the computations that take place in individual circuit elements.

Lukas Groschner receives the Schilling Research Award for his contribution to a biophysical understanding of how single neurons perform arithmetic operations. Focusing on well-defined linear and nonlinear computations in the brain of the fruit fly, he identified molecular mechanisms that allow a nerve cell to add and to multiply synaptic signals. The first discovery concerns a particular ion channel make-up that enables neurons in the olfactory system to integrate signals over time in the lead-up to a perceptual judgment. The second mechanism provides an unconventional solution to the problem of how a single neuron in the visual system can perform multiplication-like arithmetic. Unlike addition, the process of multiplicative disinhibition is independent of voltage-gated ion channels. It relies on the coincidence of excitation and release from shunting inhibition. Both discoveries bridge biophysics, brain science, and behaviour. They were made possible by the use of the fruit fly as a model organism in which moderate complexity, well-charted connectivity, and the ability to record and control the activities of identified neurons have aligned to make mechanistic ideas testable.

Lukas Groschner studied medicine at the Medical University of Graz and received a PhD from the University of Oxford. He carried out postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology.