Aus dem Institut für Neurophysiologie der Medizinischen Fakultät Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin DISSERTATION Influence of microglial activation on neuronal survival and excitability Zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades

To Maria, Vagelis and Panagiotis ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is a really trivial task trying to rank a long list of colleagues and friends, who all have contributed, materially or mentally, in the successful accomplishment of this work. In order to avoid listing them after 'importance', I would rather introduce a chronological order and start with my teacher and professor at the Medical School of Patras, Dr. Aristidis Charonis. His devotion to science captured my interest and brought me in the world of 'blots, manuscripts and citations'. I thank him the most for believing in me and for encouraging me with indissoluble enthusiasm till today. Thanks, Aris! I will always be grateful to my family, Maria, Vagelis and Panagiotis, to whom my dissertation is dedicated, for emotionally and financially supporting my decision to follow science far away from my hometown. In 2007, as a beginner in the International program 'Medical Neurosciences', I started working in the group of my professor, supervisor and teacher, Dr. Uwe Heinemann. With his warm and friendly personality that accentuates his scientific image he played a decisive role in my career orientation towards the central nervous system. I thank him a lot for his influence, for being the same time inspirational and revolutionary critical and for quite often stretching his timetable with our long-lasting project reports. In the group of Prof. Heinemann I met my former project leader and current professor at the University of Heidelberg, Dr. Oliver Kann. I thank him for trusting me in this project and for teaching me how to transform my ideas into scientific thought, how to design, organize, judge and, why not, reject a project if necessary. With him I have learned how to set the experimental rules and subsequently comply with them. I also thank him for carefully editing this manuscript, for providing me with his critical comments and for being always available for discussions. Kovacs, who devoted so much time with me in troubleshooting the electrophysiology setup. Without them and without the excellent technical assistance of Kristin Lehmann, the realization of this project on time would have been impossible. Moreover, I am exceptionally grateful to our secretary, Sonja Frosinski, to Katrin Schulze and Andrea Schütz for the lab management, to Dr. Hans-Jürgen Gabriel and Bernd Schacht for their experienced technical support. I would also like to acknowledge our collaborators from other institutes: my former classmate in the Master program and …