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Heart & Brain

Heart & Brain is a recently established collaboration between the German Primate Center (DPZ) and the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG), bringing together researchers from cardiology, neurology, and neuroscience to study the interactions between the heart and brain. Within this project, we are developing simultaneous measurement techniques for heart and brain activity to directly investigate their interdependencies.  

The central hypothesis is that stroke patients with an increased risk of arrhythmias exhibit early, identifiable activation patterns in the central autonomic network (CAN) both at rest and during autonomic challenges (e.g., psychological or physical stress). These patterns can be detected using ECG-EEG and EEG-fMRI measurements.  

Key research areas include:  
- Influences of cardiac signals on bistable perception and cortical dynamics
- Examining the interactions between heart and brain during autonomic challenges
- Heart-brain interactions at the cellular level and investigating the causal influence of specific CAN nodes on heart function