Prof. György Buzsáki visited us at Boğaziçi despite his busy schedule; after giving a stimulating keynote lecture at the National Neuroscience Congress and before heading for Budapest to celebrate the 110th birthday of János Szentágothai.
We attended the 20th National Neuroscience Congress at Acıbadem Unviersity (http://www.usk2022.org/) as a large group (Dilan, Cem, Deren, Sinem, Sena, Defne, Zeynep and Bahar).
Assoc. Prof. Ünal gave an invited talk on the basal forebrain neuromodulatory systems, while Dilan and Cem presented their recent results in the poster session.
Sama, Sinem, Defne and Deren attended the German-Turkish Summer School on Comparative Neuroscience of Brain Evolution.

We are happy to announce that Defne was awarded with a TÜBİTAK 2247-C Fellowship, joining our “STAR Team” led by Sena!
Sena, our STAR (TÜBİTAK 2247-C) fellow currently completing her undergrad studies at TOBB University, was successful in her 2209-A (Research Support Programme for Undergraduate Students) application to the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK). Her project is titled “anaylsis of rodent behavioral models with AI-based animal tracking software”.
We congratulate Sena for receiving her first research grant!
Click here to learn more about the Science Academy's Young Scientist Award Program (BAGEP).
You can watch the 2022 Award Ceremony.
Use below link to register for the 2-day event:
Our efforts on elucidating the biological and psychological correlates of environmental enrichment bore fruit, thanks to the perseverance of Beyza and Melisa.
This work demonstrates that brief enrichment following relatively long-term isolation stress leads to differential results in affective and cognitive systems. Following 30 days of social isolation, we observed a substantial anxiolytic effect in the experimental/enriched animals. However, rats exposed to enrichment also showed increased behavioral despair compared with the control group:
We are happy to announce that Deren (left) and Selçuk (center) were both awarded with a TÜBİTAK 2247-C STAR Fellowship as part of our major grant from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. Their current research investigates the interaction between environmental stimulation and the behavioral effects of ketamine. Furthermore, Sena (right) from TOBB University (Ankara) is joining our lab to invigorate the “STAR Team” with her hard work and talent in programming.









