Sonja Hofer

Last updated

Sonja Hofer is a German neuroscientist studying the neural basis of sensory perception and sensory-guided decision-making at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour. [1] Her research focuses on how the brain processes visual information, how neural networks are shaped by experience and learning, and how they integrate visual signals with other information in order to interpret the outside world and guide behaviour. She received her undergraduate degree from the Technical University of Munich, her PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried, Germany, and completed a post doctorate at the University College London. [2] After holding an Assistant Professorship at the Biozentrum University of Basel in Switzerland for five years, she now is a group leader and Professor at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour since 2018. [3]

Contents

Early life

Hofer was born in 1977 in Taufkirchen, close to Munich, Germany. She received her primary education at a local Gymnasium. [4]

Education

Undergraduate school

Hofer began her undergraduate career in Munich at the Technical University studying biology with a specialization in zoology. [3] During her undergraduate studies, Hofer worked with Starlings, studying their auditory system. [3] By recording action potentials from neurons in their brains, she studied how the brain distinguishes signals from background noise. [5]

Graduate studies

During her PhD at Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany, Hofer researched visual processing and plasticity in the primary visual cortex of mice. [6] There she worked on monocular deprivation and used mice as a model for plasticity in cortical circuits. Hofer used dendritic spine imaging and two photon laser scanning microscopy. [3] Her work demonstrated plasticity in the neocortical circuits of adult mice. Specifically, she showed that sensory experiences made early in life leave a synaptic trace in the neocortex that allows for faster adaptation of cortical circuits when the same experience is made again. [7]

Postdoctoral studies

Hofer completed her post-doctorate at the University College London from 2006 to 2012. [3] She developed a novel technique that combined in vivo two-photon calcium imaging with in vitro whole-cell recordings to study the same set of cells in vitro and in vivo. Her findings supported clear functional organization within the subnetworks in the visual cortex. [8] [9] With this technique she investigated how neurons in the cerebral cortex communicate with each other and found that connections between excitatory neurons in neocortex are highly structured, forming functionally specific subnetworks.

Career and research

Hofer's lab currently studies circuit mechanisms of sensory processing and sensory-guided decision-making. Research from the Hofer lab investigated what information about the visual scene individual neurons in visual cortex receive, [10] [11] and how learning changes neural responses to visual stimuli in primary visual cortex (V1) during acquisition of a visually-guided behavioral task. [12] [13] More recently, the Hofer lab investigated how sensory and non-sensory information is integrated by subcortical structures to guide behaviour. They found that the ventral lateral geniculate nucleus (vLGN), an inhibitory prethalamic area, is a critical hub for the control of visually-evoked fear responses depending on an animal's prior knowledge and internal state. [14] [15] [16]

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neuroscience</span> Scientific study of the nervous system

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system, its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmental biology, cytology, psychology, physics, computer science, chemistry, medicine, statistics, and mathematical modeling to understand the fundamental and emergent properties of neurons, glia and neural circuits. The understanding of the biological basis of learning, memory, behavior, perception, and consciousness has been described by Eric Kandel as the "epic challenge" of the biological sciences.

Hebbian theory is a neuropsychological theory claiming that an increase in synaptic efficacy arises from a presynaptic cell's repeated and persistent stimulation of a postsynaptic cell. It is an attempt to explain synaptic plasticity, the adaptation of brain neurons during the learning process. It was introduced by Donald Hebb in his 1949 book The Organization of Behavior. The theory is also called Hebb's rule, Hebb's postulate, and cell assembly theory. Hebb states it as follows:

Let us assume that the persistence or repetition of a reverberatory activity tends to induce lasting cellular changes that add to its stability. ... When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite a cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A’s efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.

Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity or just plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's ability to reorganize and rewire its neural connections, enabling it to adapt and function in ways that differ from its prior state. This process can occur in response to learning new skills, experiencing environmental changes, recovering from injuries, or adapting to sensory or cognitive deficits. Such adaptability highlights the dynamic and ever-evolving nature of the brain, even into adulthood.. These changes range from individual neuron pathways making new connections, to systematic adjustments like cortical remapping or neural oscillation. Other forms of neuroplasticity include homologous area adaptation, cross modal reassignment, map expansion, and compensatory masquerade. Examples of neuroplasticity include circuit and network changes that result from learning a new ability, information acquisition, environmental influences, pregnancy, caloric intake, practice/training, and psychological stress.

The Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology was a research institute of the Max Planck Society located in Martinsried, a suburb of Munich in Germany. It existed between 1984 and 2022 and merged with the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology to the new, joint Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence in 2023.

Mriganka Sur is an Indian neuroscientist. He is the Newton Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Simons Center for the Social Brain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also a visiting faculty member in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and N.R. Narayana Murthy Distinguished Chair in Computational Brain Research at the Centre for Computational Brain Research, IIT Madras. He was on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2010 and has been serving as jury chair from 2018.

Tobias Bonhoeffer is a German-American neurobiologist. He is director of the department Synapses – Circuits – Plasticity and current managing director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence in Martinsried near Munich.

The Karl Spencer Lashley Award is awarded by The American Philosophical Society as a recognition of research on the integrative neuroscience of behavior. The award was established in 1957 by a gift from Dr. Karl Spencer Lashley.

The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre (SWC) is a neuroscience research institute located in London, United Kingdom. The SWC is part of University College London (UCL), but sits outside of the faculty structure. It is funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Wellcome.

Yang Dan is a Chinese-American neuroscientist. She is the Paul Licht Distinguished Professor of Neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. She is a past recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, Beckman Young Investigator Award, and Society for Neuroscience Research Awards for Innovation in Neuroscience. Recognized for her research on the neural circuits that control behavior, she was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2018.

Claudia Clopath is a Professor of Computational Neuroscience at Imperial College London and research leader at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour. She develops mathematical models to predict synaptic plasticity for both medical applications and the design of human-like machines.

Nadine Gogolla is a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried, Germany as well as an Associate Faculty of the Graduate School for Systemic Neuroscience. Gogolla investigates the neural circuits underlying emotion to understand how the brain integrates external cues, feeling states, and emotions to make calculated behavioral decisions. Gogolla is known for her discovery using machine learning and two-photon microscopy to classify mouse facial expressions into emotion-like categories and correlate these facial expressions with neural activity in the insular cortex.

Ilana B. Witten is an American neuroscientist and professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University. Witten studies the mesolimbic pathway, with a focus on the striatal neural circuit mechanisms driving reward learning and decision making.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura Busse</span> German neuroscientist (born 1977)

Laura Busse is a German neuroscientist and professor of Systemic Neuroscience within the Division of Neurobiology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Busse's lab studies context-dependent visual processing in mouse models by performing large scale in vivo electrophysiological recordings in the thalamic and cortical circuits of awake and behaving mice.

Jessica Cardin is an American neuroscientist who is an associate professor of neuroscience at Yale University School of Medicine. Cardin's lab studies local circuits within the primary visual cortex to understand how cellular and synaptic interactions flexibly adapt to different behavioral states and contexts to give rise to visual perceptions and drive motivated behaviors. Cardin's lab applies their knowledge of adaptive cortical circuit regulation to probe how circuit dysfunction manifests in disease models.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carsen Stringer</span> American computational neuroscientist

Carsen Stringer is an American computational neuroscientist and Group Leader at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Research Campus. Stringer uses machine learning and deep neural networks to visualize large scale neural recordings and then probe the neural computations that give rise to visual processing in mice. Stringer has also developed several novel software packages that enable cell segmentation and robust analyses of neural recordings and mouse behavior.

Marta Zlatic is a Croatian neuroscientist who is group leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. Her research investigates how neural circuits generate behaviour.

Beatriz Rico is a professor of developmental neurobiology at King's College London. Her research focuses on neural circuit development.

Fan Wang is a neuroscientist and professor in the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. She is an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Wang is known for her work identifying neural circuits underlying touch, pain, and anesthesia; and the development of a technique for capturing activated neuronal ensembles (CANE) to label and manipulate neurons activated by stimuli or behavioral paradigms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Mrsic-Flogel</span> Experimental neuroscientist

Tom Mrsic-Flogel is an experimental neuroscientist. He is Director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre and a Professor in Neuroscience at University College London (UCL). Mrsic-Flogel is a founding member of the International Brain Laboratory.

References

  1. ↑ "Hofer Lab | Sainsbury Wellcome Centre". www.sainsburywellcome.org. Retrieved 2021-12-10.
  2. 1 2 "Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientists Prize for Sonja Hofer". idw-online.de. Retrieved 2021-12-10.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "Episode 13: Sonja Hofer, PhD". Conjugate: Illustration and Science Blog. Retrieved 2021-11-29.
  4. ↑ "Episode 13: Sonja Hofer, PhD". Conjugate: Illustration and Science Blog. Retrieved 2021-11-29.
  5. ↑ "Episode 13: Sonja Hofer, PhD". Conjugate: Illustration and Science Blog. Retrieved 2021-11-29.
  6. ↑ "Imaging development and plasticity in the mouse visual system" (PDF).
  7. ↑ Hofer, Sonja B; Mrsic-Flogel, Thomas D; Bonhoeffer, Tobias; Hübener, Mark (2006-08-01). "Lifelong learning: ocular dominance plasticity in mouse visual cortex". Current Opinion in Neurobiology. Sensory systems. 16 (4): 451–459. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2006.06.007. ISSN   0959-4388. PMID   16837188. S2CID   340170.
  8. ↑ Ko, Ho; Hofer, Sonja B.; Pichler, Bruno; Buchanan, Kate; Sjöström, P. Jesper; Mrsic-Flogel, Thomas D. (2011-05-05). "Functional specificity of local synaptic connections in neocortical networks". Nature. 473 (7345): 87–91. Bibcode:2011Natur.473...87K. doi:10.1038/nature09880. ISSN   0028-0836. PMC   3089591 . PMID   21478872.
  9. ↑ Mank, Marco; Santos, Alexandre Ferrão; Direnberger, Stephan; Mrsic-Flogel, Thomas D.; Hofer, Sonja B.; Stein, Valentin; Hendel, Thomas; Reiff, Dierk F.; Levelt, Christiaan; Borst, Alexander; Bonhoeffer, Tobias (September 2008). "A genetically encoded calcium indicator for chronic in vivo two-photon imaging". Nature Methods. 5 (9): 805–811. doi:10.1038/nmeth.1243. ISSN   1548-7105. PMID   19160515. S2CID   5501437.
  10. ↑ "Which Synapse Saw What?". Neuroscience from Technology Networks. Retrieved 2021-12-10.
  11. ↑ "How patterns in the brain mirror what you see". cosmosmagazine.com. 13 July 2017. Retrieved 2021-12-10.
  12. ↑ Hofer, Sonja (2015). "Learning Enhances Sensory and Multiple Non-sensory Representations in Primary Visual Cortex". Neuron. 86 (6): 1478–1490. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2015.05.037. PMC   4503798 . PMID   26051421.
  13. ↑ "Study Measures Activity of Multiple Cell Types During Learning". Neuroscience from Technology Networks. Retrieved 2021-12-01.
  14. ↑ Fratzl, Alex (2021). "Flexible inhibitory control of visually evoked defensive behavior by the ventral lateral geniculate nucleus". Neuron. 109 (23): 3810–3822.e9. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2021.09.003. PMC   8648186 . PMID   34614420.
  15. ↑ "New study uncovers brain circuits that control fear responses". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2021-12-01.
  16. ↑ "New study uncovers brain circuits that control fear responses: Neuroscientists reveal mechanism that regulates responses to threat in animals". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 2021-12-01.
  17. ↑ "Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientists Prize for Sonja Hofer". www.unibas.ch. Retrieved 2021-11-29.
  18. ↑ "Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientists Prize for Sonja Hofer". idw-online.de. Retrieved 2021-11-29.
  19. ↑ "Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientists Prize". www.ghst.de. Retrieved 2021-11-29.
  20. ↑ "ERC Starting Grants 2013 Results" (PDF).
  21. ↑ "Sonja Hofer". alleninstitute.org. Retrieved 2021-11-29.
  22. ↑ "Grants awarded: Research Career Development Fellowships". Wellcome. Retrieved 2021-11-29.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.