Tobias Bonhoeffer

Tobias Bonhoeffer (born January 9, 1960) 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 (formerly Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology).[1] His father, the neurobiologist Friedrich Bonhoeffer, was director at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen.

Education and career

Bonhoeffer studied physics at the University of Tübingen. He received his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen. As a postdoctoral fellow, he worked at Rockefeller University (USA) and at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt am Main. He then headed an independent research group at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich and was appointed in 1998 director at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology - which is now the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence.

From 2008 until 2011, Tobias Bonhoeffer was chairman of the Biology & Medicine Section of the Max Planck Society. In mid-2008, he was nominated as founding president of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) in Maria Gugging near Vienna,[2] but announced on July 21, 2008 that he would decline the offered leadership position at the ISTA for personal reasons.[3]

In 2014, Bonhoeffer was appointed to the Board of Governors of the UK Wellcome Trust,[4] where he served as governor until the end of 2021. In 2016, he became a scientific advisor to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.[5] In 2017, he was elected chairman of the Scientific Council of the Max Planck Society.

Scientific focus

Bonhoeffer's work focuses on the cellular foundations of learning and memory as well as on the early postnatal development of the brain. He and his research group were the first to demonstrate the presence of "pinwheels" in the mammalian visual system, using high-resolution imaging techniques.[6] Further research dealt with nerve growth factors, in particular brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF);[7][8] the functional strengthening of synapses, which is reflected in morphological changes of neurons through the formation of new dendritic spines;[9] the targeted degradation of proteins as a mechanism for the storage of information in the nervous system;[10] and with the process by which many cell contacts that were grown during learning are inactivated but not degraded when they are not used, which should enable much faster relearning.[11]

Important discoveries

Bonhoeffer's work led to a number of important scientific discoveries. These include:

  • the demonstration of the existence of "pinwheels" in the mammalian visual system by intrinsic optical imaging (Bonhoeffer & Grinvald, Nature 1991)[6]
  • the demonstration that neurotrophins, in particular brain-derived neurotrophic factor, play an important role in synaptic plasticity (Korte et al., PNAS 1995 & 1996)[7][8]
  • the observation that the functional strengthening of synapses is accompanied by morphological changes in the neuron, specifically by the formation of dendritic spines (Engert & Bonhoeffer, Nature 1999)[9]
  • the demonstration that hippocampal spines exhibit activity-dependent, bidirectional structural plasticity (Nägerl et al., Neuron 2004)[12]
  • the demonstration that long-lasting synaptic plasticity depends on both protein synthesis and protein degradation (Fonseca et al., Neuron 2006)[10]
  • the finding that new synaptic contacts established during a learning process persist even if the learned information has been forgotten; this facilitates subsequent relearning (Hofer et al., Nature 2009)[11]
  • the demonstration that rodents can learn to assign visual stimuli to categories, and that important changes occur in the medial prefrontal cortex during this learning process (Reinert et al., Nature 2021)[13]

Awards and memberships

Selected scientific boards

References
  1. "New Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, in foundation". idw-online.de. Retrieved 2022-04-20.
  2. ORF.at: I.S.T. Austria: Gehirnforscher Bonhoeffer wird erster Chef at archive.today (archived 2012-07-13)
  3. ORF.at: Elite-Uni: Gehirnforscher Bonhoeffer doch nicht Chef at the Wayback Machine (archived 2016-05-19)
  4. "Professor Bryan Grenfell and Professor Tobias Bonhoeffer join the Wellcome Trust Board of Governors". Wellcome Trust. 7 July 2014. Retrieved 2022-09-01.
  5. "So will Mark Zuckerberg alle Krankheiten besiegen" (in German). Welt.de. 10 November 2016. Retrieved 2022-09-01.
  6. Bonhoeffer, T; Grinvald, A (October 1991). "Iso-orientation domains in cat visual cortex are arranged in pinwheel-like patterns". Nature. 353 (6343): 429–31. Bibcode:1991Natur.353..429B. doi:10.1038/353429a0. PMID 1896085. S2CID 4342857.
  7. Korte, M; Carroll, P; Wolf, E; Brem, G; Thoenen, H; Bonhoeffer, T (September 1995). "Hippocampal long-term potentiation is impaired in mice lacking brain-derived neurotrophic factor". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 92 (19): 8856–60. Bibcode:1995PNAS...92.8856K. doi:10.1073/pnas.92.19.8856. PMC 41066. PMID 7568031.
  8. Korte, M; Griesbeck, O; Gravel, C; Carroll, P; Staiger, V; Thoenen, H; Bonhoeffer, T (October 1996). "Virus-mediated gene transfer into hippocampal CA1 region restores long-term potentiation in brain-derived neurotrophic factor mutant mice". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 93 (22): 12547–52. Bibcode:1996PNAS...9312547K. doi:10.1073/pnas.93.22.12547. PMC 38029. PMID 8901619.
  9. Engert, F; Bonhoeffer, T (May 1999). "Dendritic spine changes associated with hippocampal long-term synaptic plasticity". Nature. 399 (6731): 66–70. Bibcode:1999Natur.399...66E. doi:10.1038/19978. PMID 10331391. S2CID 4355911.
  10. Fonseca, R; Vabulas, RM; Hartl, FU; Bonhoeffer, T; Nägerl, UV (October 2006). "A balance of protein synthesis and proteasome-dependent degradation determines the maintenance of LTP". Neuron. 52 (2): 239–45. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2006.08.015. PMID 17046687.
  11. Hofer, SB; Mrsic-Flogel, TD; Bonhoeffer, T; Hübener, M (January 2009). "Experience leaves a lasting structural trace in cortical circuits". Nature. 457 (7227): 313–7. Bibcode:2009Natur.457..313H. doi:10.1038/nature07487. PMC 6485433. PMID 19005470.
  12. Nägerl, UV; Eberhorn, N; Cambridge, SB; Bonhoeffer, T (December 2004). "Bidirectional activity-dependent morphological plasticity in hippocampal neurons". Neuron. 44 (5): 759–67. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2004.11.016. PMID 15572108.
  13. Reinert, S; Hübener, M; Bonhoeffer, T; Goltstein, PM (May 2021). "Mouse prefrontal cortex represents learned rules for categorization". Nature. 593 (7859): 411–417. Bibcode:2021Natur.593..411R. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03452-z. PMC 8131197. PMID 33883745.
  14. "Mitgliederverzeichnis: Tobias Bonhoeffer". Academia Europaea. Retrieved 2017-06-20.
  15. "EMBO membership entry for Tobias Bonhoeffer". European Molecular Biology Organization. Retrieved 2023-03-15.
  16. "List of Members: Tobias Bonhoeffer". German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Retrieved 2022-09-01.
  17. "2020 newly elected members". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 2020-04-27.
  18. "Die IU Hochschulleitung" (in German). IU Internationale Hochschule. Retrieved 2022-09-01.
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