Jan Born

Jan Born receives the Leibniz Prize for his pioneering work in the area of sleep research. The primary focus of his research is how memory is formed during sleep. He was able to demonstrate not only the stabilisation of memory during sleep, but also the occurrence of cognitive processes such as problem solving strategies. He was thereby the first researcher to conclusively demonstrate a causal connection between sleep and learning. In his investigations of the individual phases of sleep, Born paid special attention to the Rapid Eye Movement-Phase (REM), about which it was previously supposed that it has a positive effect on the procedural memory. Born managed to refute this assumption in a widely respected experimental study, in which he used medication to suppress the REM phase. Finally, Born examined memory formation through sleep in other organic systems, such as the metabolic system and the immune system. His work has made important contributions to basic research. However, it also takes up important medical questions and is of great interest from the point of view of health policy. It is also highly relevant to research on learning.