New video series: Early-career researchers and their “Science Vision”

My Science Vision: understanding the brain in motion. After all, the brain controls where we look, what we reach for, where we go, and how we speak. And if we could understand all of that, it would open up entirely new possibilities. For example, we could help stroke patients learn to walk better. Movement is everywhere.

In my research, I focus on measuring brain waves. These are the electrical impulses that can actually be measured in the brain. In particular, I'm researching how to measure this brain activity when people are moving. My fundamental goal is to understand the brain. Of course, that's a huge task.

Which is why we are scaling it back a bit. I'm trying to understand how vision works. And if I want to understand vision, I need to explore an environment where vision occurs naturally – that is, with eye movements. Basically, we conduct basic research, which means we don't have a specific application in mind – such as stroke patients – at this stage. Rather, we are fundamentally developing new methods that others – and perhaps even we – can then use to do something in a clinical setting.

Take the example of a stroke and consider it in more detail. The brain stops working correctly. That means, if I can observe the brain during a movement that’s no longer functioning properly, then I can also figure out, okay, what’s working well and what’s not working so well?

I might be able to provide immediate feedback on brain activity. Maybe I can train my brain activity too. Or, of course, I could also use that for diagnostic purposes. I am a tenure-track professor. That means that relatively soon after completing my PhD – and after a brief postdoc – I was able to start building my own research group here and essentially work full-time as a professor.

But I essentially have a six-year probationary period. In Germany, professorships are awarded at a very late stage. I think the average age is about 42 or 43, and the tenure-track system is a really good idea because it moves this earlier and says, “Okay, we’ll give you a position already.” And this way, you have that peace of mind much earlier on.

And hopefully, I'll soon be on track to become a full professor. And that is a lifetime professorship. I have a very diverse work group in just about every respect. And the people come from a wide variety of countries, too. I have people from Germany ,of course, as well as from the U.S., China, Russia, Iran, and India.

I've had people from Pakistan, the Netherlands, and England – some of them students, some postdocs, and so on – and as a result, my team is very interdisciplinary. For example, from the field of cognitive science. Then I have people from the field of cognitive psychology. I have people from the fields of sports and movement science, biology, and language research – that is, linguistics.

Even people from the field of philosophy. As I said, it's a very, very diverse team, in every way. For Bachelor’s and Master’s theses, I introduced something special quite some time ago – what I call “thesis art.” And here's the idea: I take the work – I take the words that people have written in their work – and use them to design or artistically create a poster.

There are two copies, one for the student and one for me. They are all hanging in my office, which is my way of saying thank you to the student(s) for their hard work, because that sometimes gets overlooked, but it's still – they put in so much time.

It's a great project. Personally, I think it would be fantastic if I could accurately describe why people look at certain things, why they look at some things for longer or shorter periods of time – even in truly dynamic environments. I think it's ultimately a very difficult question because it's just so complex and depends so much on the situation.

But, we really need some extremely good models, and we're still a long way away from that.