Medicine
How do learning and forgetting work?
German Research Foundation (DFG) is providing
2.2 million euros in funding for research collaboration between the Universities of Bochum and Duisburg-Essen
In 2013, the Senate of the German Research Foundation (DFG) made the decision to fund a second round of the “Extinction Learning: Behavioural, Neural and Clinical Mechanisms” Research Unit at the Universities of Bochum and Duisburg-Essen for a further three years. The Research Unit is investigating the neuronal principles of extinction learning. Extinction learning describes the process in which an originally learned piece of information loses its validity and the learner is required to reconsider and adjust his or her behaviour to the new circumstances. “Although extinction learning was described over a hundred years ago by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, many aspects of the phenomenon remain unclear. Yet an in-depth understanding of extinction learning is centrally important to the treatment of anxiety disorders, drug abuse or chronic pain syndromes – for example, psychotherapy in particular draws on findings from extinction research in its approaches to a diverse range of disorders,” the coordinators of the Research Unit, Prof. Onur Güntürkün and Prof. Manfred Schedlowski, explain. The work of the Research Unit will make an important contribution to clarifying the psychological and neuronal principles of extinction learning. Three subprojects from University Hospital Essen are receiving a total of 972,000 euros in funding.