Our lab aims to understand the flexible control of complex behavior. We combine traditional neuroethological approaches with behavioral training to study the neural basis of flexible song sequencing in Bengalese finches. We use a wide range of modern systems neuroscience techniques to study neural circuits involved in motor learning and flexible motor control in the avian brain.

• Sep 2025: Philipp finished his Bsc thesis - Congratulations Philipp!
• Aug 2025: former BSc student and student technician Simon leaves us for his masters thesis in the Fee lab at MIT

• Aug 2025: New PhD student Abhilipsa Das joins the lab - Welcome!
• Jun 2025: RoadTrip! The whole lab went to the European Birdsong Meeting at the MPI in Seewiesen

• May 2025: Our bike team Japanische MOVEchen biked 1153km in three weeks and made it to place 77 of the Uni Tübingen RadChallenge
• May 2025: We finally did it! The whole lab spent three days at the Federsee field research station for a joint workshop with the Hage lab, and of course some birding, bat-detecting and musical human vocalisations.

• Apr 2025: Franzi officially starts her PhD. New Bachelor student Philipp starts his thesis in the lab.
• Mar 2025: Lioba, Jacqueline and Nils are presenting posters at the Göttingen Meeting of the German Neuroscience Society.

• Mar 2025: Former master student Franzi was chosen for a PhD fellowship from the Landesgraduiertenförderung, and will return to the lab for her PhD. Welcome back!
• Feb 2025: We received a joint grant of the DFG Middle East Cooperation with Prof. Yarden Cohen to work on variable song sequencing in Bengalese finches and canaries!

• Jan 2025: Lioba's paper: “Social context affects sequence modification learning in birdsong” (Fortkord & Veit) has been published in Frontiers in Psychology. Congratulations Lioba!
• Jan 2025: Franzi finished her master thesis. Congratulations Franzi!
• Oct 2024: Master student Nils won the Best Poster Award at NeNa! Congratulations Nils!
• Oct 2024: NeNa without Lena: All students in the lab are attending NeNa conference in Frankfurt. What will I do with all this free time? Probably update the lab website.
• Oct 2024: Our new PhD student Priya joins the lab - Welcome! Priya is the first student to officially work on the Emmy Noether project studying syllable repetition.

• Oct 2024: Nils finished his Master thesis - Congratulations! He will be around for a bit longer to share the tool he developed - stay tuned!
• Oct 2024: Lena is going to Boston to present our recent work at an MIT symposium in honor of her master thesis advisor Michale Fee
• Oct 2024: Akseli starts his lab rotation - Welcome!
• Oct 2024: Lioba and Jacqui are both presenting posters at the Avian Cognitive Neuroscience Meeting in Bochum
• Aug 2024: Alex finished his Master thesis - Congratulations!
• Jul 2024: Thomas finished his Bachelor thesis - Congratulations! He will travel to Berlin with Avani to present their results together at the International Congress for Neuroethology
• Jul 2024: Avani participated in Soapbox Science, a public outreach event in Munich
• Jun 2024: EuroTrip! Avani, Jacqui, Lioba, Nils and Lena are all going to the European Birdsong Meeting in Bordeaux

• May 2024: Lena's collaboration with the Nieder lab on vocally counting crows is now online at Science
• May 2024: Our team, Japanische MOVEchen (the German word for Bengalese finches) biked 1446km for Place 37 in the Uni Tübingen RadChallenge

• Apr 2024: Lena was accepted into the Emmy Noether-Program of the DFG! We're looking forward to new team members and cool science to come!

• Mar 2024: Avani's paper has been officially accepted in eLife!

• Sep 2023: Lena is giving a talk in the "Growing up in Science" series by award-winning student initiative Mindful Science on Sep 28 - register here
• Sep 2023: Avani is giving a talk and Jacqui is presenting her first poster from the lab at Tübingen Systems Neuroscience Symposium
• Sep 2023: Simon finished his Bachelor thesis - Congratulations! Our Erasmus+ Intern Gülnur also finished her summer project.
• July 2023: Avani finished our lab's first preprint, up now on biorxiv!

• June 2023: Lioba finished her masters thesis: No need to be sad, as she will come back as a PhD student (and publish her cool results) after some well-deserved hiking

• May 2023: Lena gave a lecture at Kinderuni "Warum singen Vögel?". Read about it in the local newspaper here!

• Apr 2023: Lena is talking about her life for Girl's day in the Schülerlabor Neurowissenschaften
• Mar 2023: We will be at NWG Göttingen! Lena is speaking in the symposium "A comparative perspective on social communication", and Avani is presenting a poster entitled "Cortical nucleus mMAN contributes to variable syllable sequencing in adult Bengalese finches"
• Mar 2023: Lena is presenting at the McGill University Neurobiology and Behavior seminar on March 17
• Mar 2023: Lena is presenting at a Cosyne workshop on "Neural mechanisms of sequence learning and execution" in Montreal on March 14 - it's literally the dream! Also check out Noémi Éltetö & Peter Dayan's poster with us on March 11: Variable syllable context depth in Bengalese finch songs: A Bayesian sequence model
• Mar 2023: Avani is giving a poster at the CIN-NIPS Asia Pacific Systems Neuroscience Symposium on March 10

• Jul 2022: Both Avani and Jacqueline are presenting posters at the International Congress Neuroethology in Lisbon

• Apr 2022: Our first PhD student Avani was awarded a PhD fellowship by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. Congratulations, Avani!

• Mar 2022: Lena is presenting (online) at CIN-NIPS Asia Pacific Systems Neuroscience Symposium on March 7 - email CIN support for registration
• Mar 2022: Jacqueline joins as a new Phd student
• Feb 2022: Lena is presenting at this month's Bridging Brains and Bioacoustics seminar: Feb 16, 4pm Register here for zoom link!
• Feb 2022: We received a fellowship from the Daimler and Benz Foundation
• Jan 2022: Lena will present at Cosyne 2022! I cannot wait for my first in-person conference in a long time :-D
• Dec 2022: Lena received the intramural Athene Grant
• Oct 2021: Avani was accepted to the IMPRS PhD program - Congratulations!
• Sep 2021: Csilla finished her Master thesis - Congratulations!

• Jun 2021: Our first Bengalese finch paper is out now in eLife: https://elifesciences.org/articles/61610