Since it was founded in September of 2002, the ZSN has defined three main research areas of interest in order to concentrate the focus of its research, establish its corporate identity, and make the ZSN competitive within Germany. Furthermore, the establishment of central research areas is intended to support research, for example in DFG Research Training Groups (GKs), Research Groups, Collaborative Research Centers (sFBs) and the like. Several different groups within the ZSN are to be involved in each research area, in some cases in cooperation with other research groups in Hannover; every area is supported by experienced experts and wherever possible by grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). These considerations led to the definition of the following three areas of scientific focus for the ZSN:

Hearing and Communication: Behaviour, Physiology and Pathophysiology
(Coordination: Elke Zimmermann)

Epilepsy and other paroxysmal disturbances: pathophysiology and new therapeutic approaches
(Coordination: Wolfgang Löscher)

Disturbances of motor systems: models and clinic
(Coordination: Eckart Altenmüller)

In 2003, a DFG Research Group was established for the first of these ZSN research areas, FOR 499, “Acoustic communication of emotion in non-human mammals and in humans: production, perception and neural processing“. This Research Group includes neuroscience groups in Hannover at the TiHo, MHH, and University of Music and Theatre, as well as the German Primate Center in Göttingen, the University of Ulm, and the Max Planck Institute for Neuropsychology in Leipzig. Funding is provided by the DFG.

In the second research area, several projects are being funded by the DFG as part of Research Training Group 605, “Characterization of pathophysiological experimental animal models – functional and genetic analyses”, under the coordination of Professor Hans-Jürgen Hedrich.

Several projects in the third area are funded as part of the DFG-Collaborative Research Group (SFB) 599, “Biomedicine technology“, coordinated by Professor Th. Lenarz. Furthermore, additional projects are funded by BMBF-Collaborative Research Groups, coordinated by Professor Thomas Brinker.

All ZSN groups have also acquired considerable additional funding – more then ten million Euros in the last five years alone – which provides a solid foundation for the high quality of neuroscientific research in Hannover. Funding for additional DFG research groups is being sought.