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Tobias Ackels
© Rolf Müller, UKB
Prof. Dr. Tobias Ackels

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Affiliations
  • Institut für Experimentelle Epileptologie und Kognitionswissenschaften, Universitätsklinikum Bonn
Research topics
  • behaviour
  • sensory circuits and processing
Sensory input across modalities is highly dynamic and continuously confronts the brain with the task of making sense of the external world. In our group at the IEECR, we study olfaction as a key sense that many species depend on for survival. Olfactory cues can be especially useful in situations such as locating food sources, mating partners or avoiding predator encounters. Natural odours form temporally complex plumes that provide information over a large range of distances, in the absence of visual cues. The complex temporal dynamics of odour plumes carry spatial information about the odour landscape. Our lab concentrates on understanding how mammals use this spatial information to navigate their environment at the cellular, circuit, and behavioural level. Using advanced opto- and electrophysiological methods and innovative quantitative behavioural paradigms, we aim to unravel how the brain encodes the dynamic external world and how this gets translated into behaviour.
Selected publications

Bosch C., Ackels T., Pacureanu A., Zhang Y., Peddie C.J., Berning M., Rzepka N., Zdora M.C., Whiteley I., Storm M., Bonnin A., Rau C., Margrie T., Briggman K., Collinson L. and Schaefer A.T. (2022) Functional and multiscale 3D structural investigation of brain tissue through correlative in vivo physiology, synchrotron micro-tomography and volume electron microscopy. Nature Communications, 13 (1), 2923.

Ackels T.*, Erskine A.*, Dasgupta D.*, Marin A.C., Warner T.P.A., Tootoonian S., Fukunaga I., Harris J.J. and Schaefer A.T. (2021) Fast odour dynamics are encoded in the olfactory system and guide behaviour. Nature, 593, 558-563.

Zeppilli S., Ackels T., Attey R., Klimpert N., Boeing S., Crombach A., Schaefer A.T. and Fleischmann A. (2021) Molecular characterization of projection neuron subtypes in the mouse olfactory bulb. eLife, 10:e65445.

Ackels T., Jordan R., Schaefer A.T. and Fukunaga I. (2020) Respiration-Locking of Olfactory Receptor and Projection Neurons in the Mouse Olfactory Bulb and Its Modulation by Brain State. Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience 14, 1-15.

Tobias Ackels
© Rolf Müller, UKB
Prof. Dr. Tobias Ackels

Website

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