Prof. Dr. Onur Güntürkün

Biopsychology
Faculty of Psychology

Research Program

Cognitive Neuroscience is one of the fastest growing areas within the Neurosciences. We, at the Department of Biopsychology are working in this area with a truly interdisciplinary group of Psychologists, Biochemists, Biologists, and Computer Scientists from all over the world.

Two main topics capture most of our interests:

• cerebral asymmetries in humans and birds
• neuronal fundaments of cognitive processes

Cerebral asymmetries are fundamental functional principles of the brain, yet our knowledge of the neuronal mechanisms of lateralizations are still extremely limited. We study these mechanisms in both in animal models and in humans. Pigeons provide a very interesting and valuable model to study visual lateralization, because in contrast to humans where visual fields cross to the other hemispheres, in pigeons, each eye crosses completely to the opposite hemisphere.

A further focus of interest is prefrontal cortex (PFC). This structure is involved in various important cognitive processes, such as decision-making, working memory, categorization and estimating time intervals. Behavioral and electrophysiological studies in birds and humans provide us new insights into the question how neuronal processes create these cognitive operations.

We use various and diverse techniques for our studies. These are: behavioral (i.e., conditioning, neuropsychological tests, lesions, microinjections), anatomical (i.e., morphometry, immunocytochemistry, tract tracing), electrophysiological (i.e., single unit recordings), and visual half field stimulation in humans.