The new research unit 5228 “Syntophagy”, a collaboration of researchers in Magdeburg, Berlin, Bremen and Haifa has been awarded funding by the German Research Foundation. The consortium lead by Dr. Michael Kreutz of the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology in Magdeburg will examine the role of autophagy in synaptic functions. In our subproject, we join forces with Anne Albrecht at the Institute of Anatomy, OVGU, to study the control of stress related behaviour through autophagy in the hippocampus.