<gero miesenböck>

Keynote talk

Lighting Up the Brain

An emerging set of methods enables an experimental dialogue with biological systems composed of many interacting cell types—in particular, with neural circuits in the brain. These methods are sometimes called “optogenetic” because they employ light-responsive proteins (“opto-“) encoded in DNA (“-genetic”). Optogenetic devices can be introduced into tissues or whole organisms by genetic manipulation and be expressed in anatomically or functionally defined groups of cells. Two kinds of devices perform complementary functions: light-driven actuators control electrochemical signals; light-emitting sensors report them. Actuators pose questions by delivering targeted perturbations; sensors (and other measurements) signal answers. Optogenetic approaches are beginning to yield previously unattainable insight into the organization of neural circuits, the regulation of their collective dynamics, and the causal relationships between cellular activity patterns and behavior.

Bio

Gero Miesenböck is Waynflete Professor of Physiology and Director of the Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour at the University of Oxford. A native of Austria, he received a medical degree from the University of Innsbruck in 1993 and then moved to the United States as a postdoctoral fellow with James Rothman. Before coming to Oxford in 2007, he held faculty appointments at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and at Yale University. 

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