Dr. Wolfgang Stein

Research Interests & Areas

We study fundamental questions in Neuroscience. Questions like how neuronal activity can withstand different environmental conditions, and how neuromodulators alter neuronal function and processing. We are expert electrophysiologists, and combine experimental and theoretical approaches in our research.

We are studying the mechanisms that allow neurons to generate activity that is robust against perturbations. We are particularly interested in how neurons deal with changing body conditions and environmental influences. Climate-change-driven temperature changes, for example, affect the nervous systems of billions of animals, and hyperthermia and fever can severely damage the human brain. Surprisingly, we know very little about how the nervous system can respond to detrimental temperature changes and how it may remain functional when it heats up.

One focus of our research is on neuromodulators that are released in the nervous system, like neuropeptides or monoamines, and how they allow neurons to continue to function during temperature perturbations. A second focus is on how sensory signals are processed in the nervous system, and how they affect neuronal activity.

We take advantage of the well-studied central pattern generators of different crab and crayfish species to achieve an evolutionary perspective of these questions and to extract general mechanisms that help us understand neuronal responses to environmental stimuli. Because crustacean neurons are comparatively large, are exposed to many environmental influences, and have a known connectome, the same neurons and circuits can also be identified in many different species, which allows evolutionary comparisons. Importantly, neurons, networks, and their modulatory systems continue to function outside of the animal, and can be kept alive for many days ex-vivo. This allows us to study the cellular and network effects of varying environmental and paracrine conditions in great detail.