Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics

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Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics

The Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics is to understand information processing in the brain.

03/09/2026

🧠✨ Meet FRUITION, a new 5-year project mapping how your brain plans ahead, solves problems, and adapts to a changing world.

Romy Lorenz has just won an European Research Council Starting Grant to study the frontoparietal network, the backbone of our cognitive skills.

Using ultra-high field fMRI, her team can image the brain's cortical layers in fine detail revealing which direction information is flowing. Instead of scanning many people once, they'll study a small group of volunteers again and again, with different methods, building a uniquely detailed picture of how this network really works.

Why it matters: this network is often disrupted in conditions like OCD, ADHD, and schizophrenia. Understanding it better could shape more precise treatments down the line.

Huge congrats to Romy!👏

🔗 https://www.kyb.tuebingen.mpg.de/erc-lorenz

24/08/2026

In the late 1950s, two young researchers threaded an electrode into a cat's brain and found something unexpected: a neuron that fired only for one edge of light at one angle.

The theory of vision they built over the years, starting from this serendipitous discovery, won David Hubel and Thorsten Wiesel the Nobel Prize. And it became a blueprint for modern computer vision.

New episode of Code of the Mind: how the brain decodes vision.
🎧 Listen now: https://www.tuebingen.mpg.de/292778/Wiesel-and-Hubel.mp3

… or on your favorite podcast platform!

23/07/2026

📺 Ein besonderer Tag am Institut: Checker Tobi war da!

(ENGLISH BELOW)

Gestern hat das Team von Checker Tobi (KiKA) bei uns gedreht – für ein großes Checker-Extra zum Thema KI. 🤖🧠
Am MPI wollte Tobi wissen: Mach KI uns dumm?
Unsere Forschungsgruppenleiterin Romy Lorenz hat ihn dafür in den MRT-Scanner gelegt, um live zu checken, was in seinem Gehirn passiert. Es hat großen Spaß gemacht, unsere Forschung einmal so zu zeigen, dass auch die kleinsten Zuschauer:innen sie verstehen! ✨
Hier ein paar Fotos vom Dreh hinter den Kulissen. Wir sind gespannt auf die Folge! Erstmals zu sehen am 15.09.2026 um 20 Uhr im KiKA.

***

📺 Special guest at the institute: Checker Tobi was here!
Yesterday the Checker Tobi (KiKA) team filmed at our institute for a big special episode about AI. 🤖🧠
At the MPI, he wanted to know: Does AI make us dumb?
Our research group leader Romy Lorenz put Tobi in the MRI scanner to check, live, what was happening in his brain. It was great fun showing our research in a way even the youngest viewers can understand! ✨
Here are a few behind-the-scenes photos. Be among the first to watch on Sept 15, 2026, at 8pm on KiKA.

20/07/2026

Meet Jose Javier Vázquez Rodríguez, the newest EMBO Fellow to join our Neuroscience & Neuroengineering lab (Jennifer Li & Drew Robson).
Jose builds genetic "light switches" — using genetic code expansion to engineer proteins that turn a gene on only when triggered by light. During his PhD he did this in roundworms; now he's adapting the approach for zebrafish, aiming for single-neuron precision: switching a specific gene on in exactly the neuron you want, at exactly the moment you want.
Paired with the lab's imaging tools, this could let researchers pinpoint what individual neurons actually do — for example, testing what happens to an animal's internal "map" of space when a single place cell is switched off.
Read Jose's full story — from an unplanned path into genetics to a roach colony at home — here: https://www.kyb.tuebingen.mpg.de/jose-vazquez-rodriguez

15/07/2026

🚴‍♀️🏹 Health Day at the Max Planck Campus!
Today our campus swapped keyboards for bows and pipettes for smoothie straws! 🥤
Our annual Health Day brought colleagues together for a full day of movement and wellbeing:

⚽ A campus challenge featuring soccer dart and other fun games
🏹 Archery for a steady aim and calm nerves
🚲 Free bike fittings to keep cycling safe and comfortable
🧘 Gymnastics breaks to stretch out the workday
🥤 A smoothie bike — pedal power blending up delicious, healthy treats
✨ and much more!

Beyond the fun, days like this are a reminder that supporting everyone’s physical and mental wellbeing is just as important as the science we produce. A healthy campus is a productive, creative, and resilient one.
Huge thanks to everyone who organized and joined in — see you at the next one! 💪

14/07/2026

Last week's CaCTüS Meet the Campus Get-Together was a wonderful occasion, filled with warm introductions from our 12 interns and plenty of great conversations! We would like to thank the Hanrieder Foundation for Excellence for making the supporting program of CaCTüS possible through the Hanrieder Impact Fund.

09/07/2026

🎙️ New episode of Code of the Mind: "Fire Together, Wire Together: The Mind of Donald Hebb"
You've heard the phrase "neurons that fire together, wire together". Donald Hebb never actually wrote it that way, and the story behind it is far richer than the soundbite suggests.
In 1949, this Canadian psychologist broke from the strict behaviorism that dominated his field and proposed a rule for how connections between neurons strengthen with experience.
This episode traces Hebb's path from a childhood in Nova Scotia, through a stalled career as a novelist, to becoming one of the founding figures of a new way of understanding the mind. His fingerprints are still visible today — in modern neuroscience, and in the learning algorithms shaping AI.
🔗 Listen now: https://www.tuebingen.mpg.de/291307/Hebb.mp3
… or on your favorite podcast platform!

08/07/2026

🌵 We are thrilled to announce that CaCTüS has officially kicked off with 12 interns from: Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Georgia, India, Nigeria, Syria, Serbia and Turkey.

More about the CaCTüS internship: www.projects.tuebingen.mpg.de

30/06/2026

🎙️ New podcast launch: "Code of the Mind" — Episode 1 is live!

We're excited to share the first episode of our new podcast on the history of computational neuroscience. This inaugural episode is dedicated to Valentino Braitenberg — neuroscientist, cyberneticist, and one of the most original thinkers to bridge biology, robotics, and the mind.

This episode coincides with the Braitenberg Symposium at our institute, a landmark symposium in computational neuroscience, gathering the field’s foremost experts from around the world to celebrate past achievements, share current breakthroughs, and brainstorm future directions.

In this episode, we trace Braitenberg's path from neuroanatomy to his famous thought experiments on vehicles and behavior — and explore why his ideas still resonate in robotics, AI, and neuroscience today.

🔗 Listen first: the new episode is live on our website now — before it lands on Spotify and Apple Podcasts later this week.
https://www.tuebingen.mpg.de/290502/Braitenberg.mp3

Have a listen, and let us know what you think.

25/06/2026

We are delighted to welcome Bruno from Argentina to our institute this summer 🌵. He will join the Developmental Computational Psychiatry lab, based at the University Hospital Tübingen, as part of the CaCTüS Internship Program. We very much look forward to meeting him soon!

About the CaCTüS program: https://www.projects.tuebingen.mpg.de/

Adresse

Max-Planck-Ring 11
Tübingen
72076

Webseite

https://www.kyb.tuebingen.mpg.de/2549/en

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