Understanding the fundamental principles underlying biological processes and finding ways to compute and simulate these realistically brings our research in numerics, scientific and high performance computing to applications in life sciences. Our main focus is to address neuroscientific problems by including all three space dimensions, time and detailed morphology that serves as the computational domain.

(Simulation by M. Breit)

Intracellular calcium dynamics are regulated by a complex cellular infrastructure. Calcium interacts with mobile buffers, is transported across the plasma membrane by voltage-dependent calcium channels, or is sequestered in internal calcium stores, like the endoplasmic reticulum or mitochondra. Bi-directional exchange across the endoplasmic membrane is controlled by SERCA pumps, ryanodine receptors, and Inositol-3-phosphate receptors. The architecture and positioning of intracellular organelles and the three-dimensional distribution and density of calcium exchangers plays a crucial role when trying to understand the propagation of calcium signals along dendrites towards the cell nucleus. Using advanced three-dimensional simulations of electrical and biochemical signals enables us to systematically investigate the broad range of cellular players involved in calcium signaling from synapse to nucleus.
(Simulation by M. Keßler)

Using reconstruction methods such as NeuRA and AnaMorph we study the electrical and biochemical behavior of healthy and diseased (morphologically altered) cells. One-dimensional cell reconstructions for electrical simulations can then be coupled to an equivalent three-dimensional cell study of biochemical signaling, using multi-scale techniques developed by our group (e.g. Grein et al.)
(Simulation by M. Breit)

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive clinical technique to stimulate certain parts of the brain, for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. While TMS is used in various clinical settings, the underlying functions are not fully understood. Especially at the cellular level, where long-term changes could be induced by TMS it remains unclear what the optimal positioning and stimulation protocol for a specific treatment should look like. We are currently focussing research at TMS function at the cellular and biochemical level to better understand long-term effects. This knowledge could be used to optimize TMS for treatment protocols.