New concepts of genetic and cellular control of brain development. The “Nature versus Nurture” debate: A pseudo-problem?

Prof. Dr. Dietmar Schmucker, Universität Bonn

Interest in brain function exists in many different fields, certainly spanning most if not all disciplines of the academy of sciences AND arts. But even within neuroscience, the academic discipline dedicated to “solve” questions of how the brain works, we find vastly different ideas, models, and approaches, used to provide answers. The novelist and self- taught neuroscience expert Siri Hustvedt pointed out that it is unclear to her as to ...” why for example, if mental problems are brain problems and not mind problems, why do we have psychiatry to treat the mind and neurology to treat the brain?... (S.H. 2017)”. Moreover, with the discoveries and new technologies provided by the powerful advent of molecular biology, yet another major scientific discipline proposes yet additional and alternative explanations. Goal of this lecture is to give some orientation in navigating the jungle of ideas and controversies in basic questions of brain function, development and plasticity. The focus will be on the long-standing debate termed “Nature versus nurture”.

In a very anthropo-centric view this discussion starts from nearly opposite ideas of how brain function and for example intelligence develop. Taking a more basic biology point of view, I will argue that new interdisciplinary work is necessary to overcome seriously flawed conceptual models of brain development and function and may be biology in general.

Dr. Dietmar Schmucker is Alexander von Humboldt Professar at the Life and Medical Sciences Institute, University of Bonn since 2020 where his research group is focusing on investigating mechanisms of neurodevelopment. His expertise spans the fields of genetics, molecular biology, cell biology, biochemistry, as well as neurocircuit analysis and nervous system development.

He studied at Ulm, Kyoto University, and LMU Munich. He did his PhD work at the MPI of Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, for which he was awarded the “Otto Hahn Medal” of the Max-Planck Society. He conducted a year of postdoctoral work at the Rockefeller Uni- versity in New York and then three years at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

He subsequently became an Assistant Professor (2001) and later an Associate Professor (2008 / 2009) at Harvard Medical School, Department of Neurobiology, Boston, USA.

After 13 years in the USA, he was recruited back to Europe as a Professor at University Leuven, Belgium, and Group leader at the VIB (Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie). He was appointed as Adjunct Director at the VIB Vesalius Research Center (2010) and then head of the Neuronal Wiring Laboratory at the VIB Center for Brain and Disease Research (2015).

In 2011, he was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). He received the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship Award in 2019 and directs since 2020 his research group as a Professor at the University of Bonn.