Brain Products Young Scientist Award 2015 presented to Thomas Schreiner, M.Sc.

Between June 4 and 6, 2015, more than 400 scientists attended the annual meeting of the German Society for Basic and Applied Psychophysiology (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychophysiologie und ihre Anwendung; DGPA), which this year was held in Frankfurt (Germany). Just as in previous years, Brain Products sponsored the Brain Products Young Scientist Award, granted to a young researcher for an outstanding paper. This year’s winner was Thomas Schreiner, M.Sc. from the Institute of Psychology at Zurich University (Switzerland), under the supervision of Björn Rasch.

Thomas Schreiner earned his Master’s degree in 2010 at the University of Vienna (Austria) and has been working at University of Zurich since 2012.

The award, which is endowed with prize money of 1000 Euro, was awarded to Thomas Schreiner, M.Sc. for his publication “Boosting Vocabulary Learning by Verbal Cueing During Sleep” (Schreiner T., Rasch B., Boosting Vocabulary Learning by Verbal Cueing During Sleep Cereb Cortex. 2014 Jun 23. pii: bhu139. [Epub ahead of print]). This study’s results indicate that verbal cues presented during NonREM sleep reactivate associated memories, and facilitate later recall of foreign vocabulary without impairing ongoing consolidation processes. Likewise, the oscillatory analysis suggests that both sleep-specific slow waves as well as theta oscillations (typically associated with successful memory encoding during wakefulness) might be involved in strengthening memories by cueing during sleep.

Congratulations on winning the “Brain Products Young Scientist Award 2015”, Thomas, and best wishes for your future!