Gero Miesenböck
Gero Miesenböck
Gero Miesenböck studied medicine at the University of Innsbruck in his native Austria and did postdoctoral research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Currently, he is Waynflete Professor of Physiology & Director, Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
Research in Gero Miesenböck’s lab seeks to identify elementary neural circuits that perform fundamental operations, such as integrating information over time, applying decision thresholds, computing error signals, and storing memories. Much of this work is done in fruit flies, where principles of brain function with direct relevance to human health can be dissected with unparalleled precision. Optogenetic control has been a key enabling technology in his research. It has allowed his group to link activity in defined neuronal populations causally to the expression of behavior, delineate how neurons are wired into circuits, and test ideas about how these circuits work.
The Brain Prize 2013 is also awarded to:
