DGPPN Research Award
Prof. Dr. Dusan Hirjak, Managing Senior Physician at the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and Group Leader at CIMH, has been awarded the DGPPN Research Award for predictive, preventive, and personalized medicine in psychiatry and neurology. In his work, Hirjak follows a neurobiological and domain-based approach that comprehensively considers mental health. His primary scientific focus lies in sensorimotor dysfunctions in mental illnesses. Using state-of-the-art imaging techniques, he investigates how structural and functional changes in the brain are related to various sensorimotor symptoms in mental disorders.
Additionally, Prof. Hirjak is working on developing common standards that can be established worldwide in the prevention, early detection, therapy, and research of sensorimotor dysfunctions in mental illnesses. He explores how sensorimotor abnormalities are linked to other functional domains such as cognition and emotion. Furthermore, he conducts clinical studies to directly implement the insights gained into practice, thereby enhancing treatment options for individuals with mental disorders.
The award is presented annually at the Congress of the German Society for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics, and Neurology (DGPPN) and comes with a prize of 10,000 euros. Hirjak shares the award equally with researcher Prof. Dr. Jonathan Repple from the University Hospital Frankfurt
Wilhelm-Feuerlein Research Award
Dr. Marcus Meinhardt,Research Associate at the Institute of Psychopharmacology and the Department of Molecular Neuroimaging, has been honored with the Wilhelm-Feuerlein Research Award from the Oberberg Foundation Matthias Gottschaldt and the German Addiction Foundation at the DG-Sucht 2023 conference. Meinhardt received recognition for his work titled "Psilocybin targets a common molecular mechanism for cognitive impairment and increased craving in alcoholism" in the field of basic research/population epidemiology. In this research, he demonstrates, among other findings, how Psilocybin can molecularly influence brain processes to contribute to reducing relapse rates in alcohol dependence. The research thus paves the way for new therapeutic approaches focusing on the observed molecular effect. The award is endowed with 4,000 euros.
Pain Research Grant 2023
Dr. Martin Löffler, a researcher at CIMH and a member of the Institute of Neuropsychology and Clinical Psychology under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Dr. h.c. Herta Flor, has won the Pain Research Grant 2023. This award supports work in the field of applied research and implemented basic research that has made a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary, practice-oriented therapy of acute and chronic pain. The prize is preferably awarded to young scientists in the fields of medicine, psychology, and natural sciences.
CIMH researcher Löffler received the award for a study in which, together with other researchers, he examined the mechanisms of the development of chronic back pain in a longitudinal study. The study focused on neural mechanisms of reward learning and was published under the title "Corticostriatal circuits in the transition to chronic back pain: The predictive role of reward learning." Due to its relevance, the work was awarded the first prize in the "Clinical Research" category for the prevention and treatment of chronic back pain.
The research was conducted within the framework of the Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 1158 "From nociception to chronic pain: Structure-function properties of neural pathways and their reorganizatio." The award was presented on October 19, 2023, at the German Pain Congress by the German Pain Society e.V. The first prize in the "Basic Research" category was also awarded to an early-career scientist from the SFB1158, Dr. Zheng Gang.
Poster Award at the "Psychology and Brain" Conference
Simon Kern, a doctoral student in the Psychology and Neurobiology of Sleep and Memory research group under the supervision of PD Dr. Gordon Feld, won a poster award at this year's "Psychology and Brain" conference. The title of the contribution is "Graded Clustered Reactivation during Declarative Memory Retrieval: Evidence from MEG Recording" and the authors of the contribution are Simon Kern, Juliane Nagel, Martin Fungisai Gerchen, Cagatay Guersoy, Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, Peter Kirsch, Raymond J. Dolan, Steffen Gais, and Gordon B. Feld.
The award, endowed with 300 euros, was presented at the conference held from June 8 to 10, 2023, at the University of Tübingen. The "Psychology and Brain" conference is the most significant biopsychological conference in Germany, which has gained international attention and where the latest research findings in the field of Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience are presented.