Inhibition is a fundamental principle in our mental lives and a basic mechanism of brain functioning. This introductory talk will provide an overview about inhibition across various different levels of neural and mental organization. Starting with inhibition at the level of neurons and small circuits, I will describe how specific neurotransmitters and both feed forward and feedback inhibition counterbalance excitation within single neurons and within neural networks and serve to maintain homeostasis. In the second part, I will describe how inhibition allows for the temporal organization of neural processing during brain oscillations that in turn bind spatially distributed activity into coherent networks. I will then turn to inhibition at the behavioral level, starting with basic processes of extinction learning and forgetting but also covering more complex psychological functions related to memory suppression, delay discounting, and emotional regulation. Across all of these levels, I will address the fundamental question whether inhibition leads to a decay and disappearance of inhibited neural activities and mental contents or whether it rather relies on suppression that may be followed by possible rebound phenomena.

Nikolai Axmacher, M.D., studied Philosophy and Medicine at Berlin and Paris, and is now Professor of Neuropsychology at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. His work explores the neural foundations of memory functions and dysfunctions using cognitive neuroscience methods, with a particular interest in the representation and transformation of specific contents by the brain. Professor Axmacher investigates a wide range of memory processes, from working and long-term memory, to memory consolidation during resting state and sleep, autobiographical memory, and repression. His research addresses questions such as: How are experiences represented in the brain and transformed into memory traces?; and How do these experiences shape our Self?