Understanding how brain structure supports cognitive function requires recognizing the brain as fundamentally biosocial, its architecture emerging from continuous interactions between genetic factors and social-environmental experience. We investigate how brain structure both constrains and enables cognitive functions, and how this relationship operates bidirectionally over time.
This relationship unfolds across multiple scales. At the micro/mesoscale, cortical laminar organization, myeloarchitecture, and cellular composition provide the substrate for local computation. At the macroscale, organizational gradients and network configurations enable integrated processes including perception, memory, decision-making, and social cognition. Crucially, this architecture exhibits remarkable plasticity throughout the lifespan, shaped by the extended period of human neurodevelopment and our reliance on social relationships for learning and adaptation. We use computational tools to desipher the relationship between genes and environment, structure and function over the lifespan in health and disease.
We are based at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig and INM-7, Forschungszentrum Jülich in Jülich, both in Germany. We are part of Helmholtz International Bigbrain analytics & learning laboratory set up by Forschungszentrum Jülich and Montreal Neurological Institute, Montreal, Canada.