In 2024, the winners of the Boehringer Ingelheim FENS Research Award are Dr Maria Llorens-Martín (ES) and Dr Michael Yartsev (US).

Meet Dr Maria Llorens-Martín

I have devoted my career to studying adult hippocampal neurogenesis (AHN), a unique phenomenon of plasticity that occurs in the adult brain. I received my Ph.D. from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 2009 for my research into the effects of physical exercise on AHN (Llorens-Martin et al., Hippocampus 2006; Llorens-Martín et al., Neuropsychopharmacology, 2011). In 2010, I joined Prof. Ávila’s lab at the Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa (CBMSO) as a postdoctoral researcher, where I demonstrated the reversibility of AHN alterations in murine models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) (Llorens-Martín et al., Molecular Psychiatry, 2013). During my postdoctoral period in Prof. Ávila´s lab, I also gained mechanistic insight into the molecular mechanisms triggering impairments in AHN and neuron-to-microglia cross-talk in mouse models of AD and other tauopathies (Fuster-Matanzo*, Llorens-Martín* et al., Human Molecular Genetics, 2013), and in response to acute stress (Llorens-Martín et al., Brain Behavior and Immunity, 2016). In 2015, I was granted a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowship to develop novel molecular tools to study AHN in AD (Llorens-Martín et al., Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, 2016).

In 2016, I set up my own laboratory at the CBMSO where we focus on deciphering the mechanisms regulating human AHN, with a marked therapeutic approach. The securement of funding from international highly competitive calls (The BrightFocus Foundation (USA); the Alzheimer´s Association (USA); the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration (USA), Basic Science Pilot Grant Award 2016, among others) was instrumental to launch my laboratory during the initial stages of my career as an independent principal investigator. During that initial stage of my independent scientific career, we unraveled an unexpected neuroprotective role of Tau protein in depression (Pallas-Bazarra et al., EMBO J, 2016). Supported by the ERC Consolidator Grant HumAN, we pioneered state-of-the-art tissue preservation and imaging methodologies to study human AHN. We have published several manuscripts addressing this topic (Terreros-Roncal et al., Science, 2021; Moreno-Jiménez et al., Nature Medicine, 2019; and Flor-García et al., Nature Protocols, 2020; among others). These studies demonstrate the occurrence of human AHN until the tenth decade of life and the impairment of this process by neurodegenerative diseases. We have shown the presence of immature neurons, neural stem cells, and proliferative cells in the human dentate gyrus, together with a complex network of microglia, astrocytes, and blood vessels in this structure, thereby robustly demonstrating the occurrence of human AHN, one of the most debated topics in modern neuroscience.

Meet Dr Michael Yartsev

Our research leverages the power of natural behavior (Yartsev, Science, 2017) to uncover general principles of higher-level brain functions related to learning & memory, group sociality, and communication. This research broadly encompasses the study of the Neural Basis of Spatial Behaviors, Learning and Memory. Earlier in my career, I pioneered the tools for wireless electrophysiological recording in freely behaving and flying bats which allowed me to study how self-position in two- and three-dimensional spaces is represented in the brain (Yartsev et al., Nature, 2011, Yartsev & Ulanovsky, Science, 2013a, Yartsev, Science, 2013b). Next, in my laboratory, we developed a fully automated foraging environment which enabled studying key aspects of the bat’s complex spatial behavior. Combined with our wireless neural recordings methods we discovered that neural activity in the same brain structures represent self-locations along a continuum extending from positions the animal occupied in the past to ones it will occupy in the future (Dotson & Yartsev, Science, 2021). Additionally, we established tools for wireless calcium imaging in flying bats and leveraged the stable behavior of bats to ask how long-term spatial memories are represented. We discovered a highly stable neural code, extending across days, weeks, and contexts. This revealed a potential neural substrate for how long-term memories are stored (Liberti et al., Nature, 2022).

Another research direction my lab has developed is the neuroethological Investigation of Social-Acoustic Behaviors in Individuals and Groups: The study of acoustic behavior in bats is further exciting because bats are believed to possess an extremely rare capacity for vocal learning – the process by which humans acquire spoken language (Wirthlin et al., Neuron., 2019). Therefore, our lab also developed a new direction –the neurobiology of vocal learning in the mammalian brain. Probing the vocal plasticity abilities of bats, we found that they indeed possessed a highly flexible, yet stable, control over their vocalizations (Genzel et al., Nature Communication, 2018). Next, we mapped the relevant brain regions in bats using anatomical, genetic, and electrophysiological tools. This resolved long-standing mystery about whether vocal learning mammals possess a genetically and anatomically specialized brain region for vocal control – the answer was ‘Yes (Wirthlin et al., Science, 2024). Observing the intriguing vocal behavior of bats, we embarked also pioneered the study of the neural mechanisms of group sociality and communication in bats. To do so, we established the technology for multi-brain neural recordings. In our first study we discovered a striking form inter-brain synchrony that emerged during social interactions (Zhang & Yartsev, Cell, 2019) – akin to what has been suggested in humans. Extending this approach to larger groups we uncovered a rich repertoire of both inter- and intra-brain neural signals that are important for social communication such as a distinct representation of ‘self’ vs. ‘others’, individual identity, and social relationships (Rose et al., Science, 2021). More recently, we began merging the remarkable spatial and social behaviour of groups of bats to study the neural mechanisms of collective behaviour in groups of flying bats. Using wireless neural recordings from the hippocampus of bats foraging together we found neural activity was robustly tuned to key features of the collective group dynamics. This included representing the social nature of the spatial behaviour, the identities and even sensory signalling of other individuals (Forli & Yartsev, Nature, 2023). This new line of research begins to unveil the richness of group sociality in bats and its utility for revealing neural mechanisms of higher-level social cognition.