Jan Born

Key takeaways

Jan Born belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Jan Born to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Jan Born from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Jan Born (born March 30, 1958, in Celle, Germany) is a neuroscientist who researches the role of sleep in memory consolidation, problem solving, and brain plasticity. He is Head of the Institute of Medical Psychology and the Behavioral Neurobiology department at the University of Tübingen. Born serves as the Deputy Editor of SLEEP, the Section Editor of Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, and the Associate Editor of the Journal of Sleep Research. In 1988 Born received the Marius Tausk-Award from the German Society for Endocrinology. In 2010 he received the Leibniz Award of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. In 2017, he received the Oswald-Külpe Award, with the award citation emphasizing that in his "very innovative studies, he was able to prove that it is not REM sleep, but deep sleep that is crucial for the transmission of information to the long-term memory of the brain and thus for memory formation." Born is a member of the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

Biography Born studied psychology, mathematics, and medicine at the University of Tübingen and the University of Ulm from 1976 to 1980. He was a research fellow from 1980 to 1981 in the Department of Biological Psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He attended the University of Tübingen, where he obtained his Ph.D. in psychology in 1985. As a graduate student, Born investigated the use of potential-related events in studying brain function in humans. After completing his doctorate, Born completed his habilitation in psychology at the University of Ulm (1985-1989). Born was professor of physiological psychology at the Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg (1989–1998) and professor of neuroendocrinology at the University of Lübeck (1999–2010) before joining the faculty of the University of Tübingen as chair of medical psychology in 2010. Born's work has been supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Research Born researches and publishes in the field of memory formation during sleep. He was one of the first researchers to show that sleep was causally related to memory. He showed that procedural memories are not consolidated by REM sleep, as has been previously assumed. Instead, he showed that procedural memories are improved when REM sleep is pharmacologically suppressed. Born found that slow-wave sleep reactivates recently encoded memories while REM sleep stabilizes them. As well, his research demonstrated that slow-wave sleep actually consolidates immunological memories (it helps the immune system to identify antigens) as well as psychological memories. He also found that sleep especially assists in consolidating memories that involve a promise of reward. His other work focuses on the metabolic and behavioral control of body weight.

Representative Publications Born, Jan; Lange, Tanja; Kern, Werner; McGregor, Gerard P.; Bickel, Ulrich; Fehm, Horst L. (6 May 2002). "Sniffing neuropeptides: a transnasal approach to the human brain". Nature Neuroscience. 5 (6). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 514–516. doi:10.1038/nn0602-849. ISSN 1097-6256. PMID 11992114. S2CID 10826706. Diekelmann, Susanne; Born, Jan (4 January 2010). "The memory function of sleep". Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 11 (2). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 114–126. doi:10.1038/nrn2762. ISSN 1471-003X. PMID 20046194. S2CID 1851910. Rasch, Björn; Büchel, Christian; Gais, Steffen; Born, Jan (9 March 2007). "Odor Cues During Slow-Wave Sleep Prompt Declarative Memory Consolidation". Science. 315 (5817). American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): 1426–1429. Bibcode:2007Sci...315.1426R. doi:10.1126/science.1138581. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17347444. S2CID 19788434. Rasch, Björn; Pommer, Julian; Diekelmann, Susanne; Born, Jan (5 October 2008). "Pharmacological REM sleep suppression paradoxically improves rather than impairs skill memory". Nature Neuroscience. 12 (4). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 396–397. doi:10.1038/nn.2206. ISSN 1097-6256. PMID 18836440. S2CID 5231613. Westermann, Jürgen; Lange, Tanja; Textor, Johannes; Born, Jan (2015). "System Consolidation During Sleep – A Common Principle Underlying Psychological and Immunological Memory Formation". Trends in Neurosciences. 38 (10). Elsevier BV: 585–597. doi:10.1016/j.tins.2015.07.007. hdl:1874/329452. ISSN 0166-2236. PMID 26442693. S2CID 3528280.

References

External links Faculty Home Page Google Scholar Profile German Wikipedia Biography

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Jan Born

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Jan Born claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Jan Born before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Jan Born ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Jan Born

In research: Jan Born appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Jan Born in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Jan Born is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1958 births, Academic staff of the University of Tübingen, German neuroscientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Jan Born outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Jan Born in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Jan Born means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Jan Born out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jan Born in simple terms?

Jan Born (born March 30, 1958, in Celle, Germany) is a neuroscientist who researches the role of sleep in memory consolidation, problem solving, and brain plasticity. He is Head of the Institute of Medical Psychology and the Behavioral Neurobiology department at the University of Tübingen.

Why does Jan Born matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Jan Born?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Jan Born.