Sebastian Ocklenburg successfully graduated on the 25th of November 2011 in the Faculty of Psychology. He so much impressed the committee with his outstanding thesis and his strong defense that they unanimously decided to grade his doctoral project with a summa cum laude. Given the high threshold for this grade in our Faculty, this is an extremely rare and very prestigious event. Sebastian submitted a publication-based thesis with six papers in which he analyzed the phylogenetic, ontogenetic, genetic, and neuronal mechanisms of cerebral asymmetries. He was able to show that vocal asymmetry has a long evolutionary history, that experience-based factors shape human handedness, and that early neuronal processes guided language lateralization. In addition, he identified a genetic association for language asymmetry.

CONGRATULATIONS SEBASTIAN !!!