So much has happened at our institute and with our institute over the past month or two that our report on our own conference is actually a retrospective. But this review is necessary to make the next one even better. Although this one was good, too!

An extraordinary report on an extraordinary observation! How do the place cells of the hippocampus work? The Nusser group's discovery was published in the journal eLife and the first author Máté Sümegi reports on it. 

The study, published in Science Advances and resulting from collaboration between Makara and the Ujfalussy group, revealed how the activity patterns of nerve cells in the hippocampus, the brain's main learning and memory center, change during spatial learning and adaptation to sudden changes in the environment. The results show that the hippocampus plays an important role not only in learning but also in brain processes responsible for cognitive flexibility. Further investigation of these processes may lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying cognitive decline observed in many psychiatric disorders and in aging.

Just a week ago, students from five high schools visited us as part of the MTÜ program, where they attended lectures and visited laboratories. On Wednesday and Thursday (November 19-20), students from Semmelweis University's Talent Development Program will visit us, and we may welcome some of them as TDK students in a few years' time, as their visit here has inspired them to pursue neuroscience.

Academician Zoltán Nusser, deputy director of our institute, after winning two ERC Advanced Grants (2011, 2017), together with Attila Losonczy (University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center) and Ivo Spiegel (Weizmann Institute), has won this year's Synergy Grant, the most competitive and prestigious grant offered by the ERC.