The Mind Meeting Series is back! On Thursday 12th February 2026, 3.00 pm CET, Professor Lukas Kunz (University Hospital Bonn, Germany) will give the first hybrid talk of this year entitled “Probing the cellular mechanisms of spatial memory through human single-neuron recordings”.
The talk, organized by the Doeller Lab and Bicanski Lab, will take place on site (in the Wilhelm Wundt Room at the MPI CBS) and virtually via Zoom. Please join us and subscribe to the Mind Meeting Mailing List on our homepage!
Zoom link: https://eu02web.zoom-x.de/j/66414535423?pwd=oWjWW9vlWZcEVGCWM3jRCRQAbrcA6u.1
Meeting ID: 664 1453 5423
Password: MMFeb26
Abstract
Cognitive maps are mental representations that organize information along continuous feature dimensions. Research in animal models indicates that functional cell types in the hippocampus and surrounding brain regions constitute the neural building blocks of cognitive maps, but it still remains uncertain whether such cell types also exist in the human medial temporal lobe. In this talk, Lukas Kunz will discuss results from studies with single-unit recordings in epilepsy patients aimed at identifying cellular correlates of cognitive maps in humans. While tuning profiles are generally weaker than in animal models, these studies suggest the presence of human cell types with allocentric and egocentric tuning properties in both spatial and emotional contexts. These results provide an entry point for translating cellular observations from animals to the human brain, and for testing their role in human cognitive maps.
