Dr. Johannes Letzkus is awarded an ERC Starting Grant to study attention

Johannes Letzkus, Max Planck Research Group Leader at the MPI for Brain Research as off September 2013, is one of the 46 laureates in Germany and one of 108 laureates from the Life Sciences to receive this prestigious European award. We congratulate him on this achievement.

Johannes will use the award money (appr. 1.5 million Euro) to study attention in mice using in vivo two-phonon microscopy and optogenetics. He will use these techniques to identify the neurons underlying attentional modulation and investigate how this affects computations in the circuit. Additionally, he will test his results at the level of behavior. The expected results will provide a detailed, mechanistic dissection of the neuronal basis of attention.