At BrainVisionCenter, an increasing number of our colleagues are earning scientific degrees day by day, continuously strengthening the professional and research excellence of our Institute. 

We are proud to share that Zoltán Szadai has successfully defended his PhD. 

His research, titled “Representation of Reinforcement Signals in the Neocortex by Vasoactive Intestinal Polypeptide-Expressing Interneurons,” has been described as groundbreaking by the doctoral committee. 

The study offers important new insights into how learning-related signals are represented in the brain. As highlighted by his supervisor, Balázs Rózsa: 

“The committee was very surprised by the findings, as-like the rest of the world-they expected that during learning, the global ‘teaching’ signal we described, which ascends from deeper brain regions to initiate learning, would appear more strongly in the frontal part of the brain, in the frontal lobe. In contrast, Zoltán Szadai’s research demonstrated that all brain regions were activated in a roughly uniform manner. This represents a paradigm shift in the field.” 

These findings challenge long-standing assumptions in neuroscience and may reshape how we understand the neural mechanisms of learning. 

We congratulate Zoltán on this outstanding achievement and wish him continued success in his scientific career.