Lüder Deecke

Biography

Deecke was born in Lohe-Rickelshof, Germany on 22 June 1938. After obtaining high-school diploma at the Humanistisches Gymnasium Ernestinum in Celle in 1958, Deecke began the study of physics at the University of Hamburg. 1959 he was drafted for military service finishing the service in 1960 as a lieutenant. From 1960 to 1965 he studied medicine in Freiburg im Breisgau, Hamburg and Vienna with a scholarship of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung). In 1966 he became M.D. with a doctoral thesis about the Bereitschaftspotential, which he had discovered together with Hans Helmut Kornhuber. From 1964 to 1966 he worked at the Neurological University Hospital of Freiburg under Richard Jung and from 1967 to 1970 at the Neurological University Hospital of Ulm under H. H.Kornhuber. After a scientific stay as Research Fellow at the University of Toronto from 1970 to 1971, he completed his habilitation in 1974 and became Professor of Neurology and Neurophysiology. In 1982 he was Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, later awarded with honorary doctor there in 2003. In 1985 he was appointed to the chair of Clinical Neurology at the University of Vienna and became head of the Neurological University Hospital of Vienna (till 2000). 1991 Deecke also became head of the Department of Clinical Neurology. In 1991 he was Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California, Irvine with Arnold Starr. 1993 Deecke founded the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Functional Brain Topography in Vienna. In 2006 Deecke has been professor emeritus.

Scientific contribution

In 1964 Deecke performed as doctoral student of Hans Helmut Kornhuber, EEG-recordings in man accompanying volitional movements and actions, and they discovered a slowly increasing activation (negative deflection) in the EEG, which they called Bereitschaftspotential

The term Bereitschaftspotential (BP) can be found in the ‘List of German expressions in English‘. In order to record brain activity prior to an unforeseeable event – which a voluntary movement undoubtedly is – it needs a special method: the reverse averaging, which was invented by Kornhuber and Deecke in the same year (1964). The full paper appeared in 1965 and was awarded a Citation Classic.

In 1970 and 1971 Deecke was a research fellow in Toronto, Canada, under John M. Fredrickson. He performed experiments in the vestibular system (sense of balance) with rhesus monkeys and found the thalamic relay nucleus, nucleus ventralis posterior inferior (VPI) for the vestibular projection to the cortex. In a second project, he investigated – with the rhesus monkey – normothermic perfusion as a therapeutic means with spinal cord compression, and as a third project the alterations of the auditory evoked potentials under respiratory stress.

In 1978 a further Citation Classic appeared with the discovery that the supplementary motor area (SMA) is active prior to voluntary actions and also prior to the activation of the primary motor cortex (M1, Brodmann-Area4). This publication established the scientific knowledge that the early component of the Bereitschaftspotential (BP1 or BPearly) is generated by the activity of the SMA. BP1 is bilaterally symmetrical, because always – i.e. also with unilateral actions – the SMAs of both hemispheres are active, further substantiated by subsequent research. The second component of the Bereitschaftspotential (BP2 oder BPlate) is generated by the primary motor cortex M1, and BP2 is asymmetrical with unilateral movements, namely dominant over the contralateral hemisphere. In Ulm, Deecke had projects with the DFG (German Research Foundation), and a productive team with research on the vestibular system and the motor system emerged including vestibular and neck interaction. In 1982 during Deecke‘s visiting professorship on invitation of Hal Weinberg in Vancouver, the Magnetoencephalographic-(MEG-) analogue of the Bereitschaftspotential, the Bereitschaftsmagnetfeld (Bereitschaftsfield, BF) was first recorded.

From 1985 on in Vienna, Deecke has built his own MEG, the first generation with a five-channel MEG-System, and from 1995 on with the MEG Centre Vienna an MEG-whole head system with 143 channels (CTF Vancouver, Canada) has been established. Deecke and his team were successful to prove the participation of the SMA not only with the early Bereitschaftspotential but also with the Bereitschaftsmagnetfeld (Bereitschaftsfield in the MEG, solving the cancellation problem of the two SMAs opposing each other. In 1984 visual tracking movements were investigated. Evidence was found that the frontal cortex (SMA, prefrontal cortex) gives the starting command of the movement or action and supervises it, but the SMA does not execute the action. The frontal brain (including the SMA) is ‘delegating' this to the ‘expert systems for tracking in the brain‘, namely to the visual cortex and to the M1.

In 2002 the term Bereitschafts-BOLD response was coined by Ross Cunnington et al. in event-related fMRI studies at the Department of Clinical Neurology and the Department of Radiodiagnostics Medical University of Vienna. Thus, according to Deecke und Kornhuber [7],[15],[16] the early component of the BP (BP1 or BPearly) is generated by the following areas: the SMA proper, the pre-SMA and the cingulate motor area, CMA. This is now called anterior mid-cingulate cortex, aMCC. The second component (BP2 or BP late) is generated by the motor cortex (M1). Contrary to earlier views, the intentional activity according to Kornhuber and Deecke does not travel directly from the SMA to motor cortex M1 but is running via the cortico-basalganglio-thalamo-cortical loop in short motor loop. The motor loop has been discovered in patients with Parkinson's Disease (PD).It could be shown, that deep brain stimulation improves frontal cortex function in PD patients. This means that the formation of the will has already taken place in the frontal lobe and the preparation and planning of the action has been transferred initially to the unconscious routine processes of the basal ganglia, which do the groundwork for the motor cortex, M1. M1 finally generates the volley for the pyramidal tract, which then enters consciousness. During the early BP, BP1, the action planning is not yet conscious, but during BP2 it is. From this observation Benjamin Libet, postulated that we do not have free will (BP1) but with the control of the action (BP2) we do have free will. However, Kornhuber and Deecke, have shown that consciousness is not a sine qua non for free will. There are conscious and unconscious agendas in the brain, and both are important. The unconscious agendas far outweigh the conscious agendas, consciousness being only the ‘tip of an iceberg’. Therefore, free will is involved with both, the initiation of the action and for the control of the action.

The views of Kornhuber and Deecke upon the SMA and CMA were confirmed in the meantime by Ross Cunnington and his team: The limbic system is always involved in the early planning for action – the matching with the inner needs, the emotional basic state, and our respective mood – has been postulated by Kornhuber and Deecke for quite some time and has been confirmed recently by the Cunnington group. Kornhuber and Deecke have shown that freedom is given, a freedom in degrees of freedom, that humans can regulate up by their own efforts and learning in order to improve their free will, which is not a granted state but a dynamic process.

Awards and recognitions

Memberships

Deecke had memberships of 52 international and national scientific organizations during his active time till October 2006. From 1987 to 2011 he was President of the Österreichische Multiple-Sklerose-Gesellschaft. In 2015 he was elected Chair of the subspecialty scientific panel (SPP) on Higher Cortical Functions of European Academy of Neurology (EAN). Deecke was also in several Editorial Boards of scientific journals.

Publications

Books

Scientific articles

Deecke published 600 scientific papers:

Publication list on private Homepage

ResearchGate Publication list