Rebecca Busy

Zelie Britton

Olof Rorsman

Lea Ballenberger

Shaw Prize 2020

For his foundational work on “the development of optogenetics, a technology that has revolutionized neuroscience”, Gero Miesenböck is to receive the 2020 Shaw Prize in Life Sciences and Medicine.

The Shaw Prize is regarded as the preeminent international recognition for scientific achievement among awards originating in Asia.

Miesenböck was named the winner of the prize, along with Peter Hegemann of Humboldt University and Georg Nagel of the University of Würzburg, on May 21 in an announcement by the Hong Kong-based Shaw Prize Foundation. The trio was cited for discoveries that allow specific neural networks in the brain to be remote-controlled: “These discoveries presage a golden age of exploration of the mysteries of cognition and emotion.”

Three Shaw Prizes, each with an award of $1.2 million, are presented to scientists in the fields of life sciences and medicine, mathematics, and astronomy.

The other Shaw Prize recipients for 2020 are mathematicians Alexander Beilinson of the University of Chicago and David Kazhdan of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and astrophysicist Roger Blandford of Stanford University.

Lisa Fenk

Abstract:   Almost all a­­nimals move and when they do, they alter the stream of information to their auditory, mechanosensory, visual, and other sensors. My work focuses on understanding two fundamental aspects of such active sensation. On the one hand, how do brains ignore those aspects of the changing sensory stream that are not informative for the task at hand. On the other hand, and perhaps more remarkably, how do brains actively move their sensors to create sensory patterns of activity that better allow them to perceive the world. I am using the fruit fly visual system to study both of these sensory challenges in a genetic model organism.

During fast flight turns we observe motor-related inputs to Drosophila visual cells whose properties suggest that they would briefly abrogate the cells’ visual-sensory responses. Rather than a wholesale shutdown of the visual system during flight turns, fly visual neurons are targeted by inputs that are precisely calibrated to abrogate each cell’s unique, expected visual response, suggesting that they function as “efference copies”.

 In addition to suppressing the perception of self-generated visual motion during flight turns, flies also seem to purposefully generate visual motion in other circumstances. We recently found that Drosophila perform active retinal movements, akin to vertebrate eye movements, ranging from fixational microsaccades to an optokinetic reflex. These movements could serve to refresh the image, direct visual attention, or increase acuity. We are currently perturbing the motoneurons that innervate the retinal muscles via optogenetics with the aim of informing the contributions of retinal movements to visually guided behaviors.

Haram Park

Alicia Hidalgo

Abstract: Experience alters brain structure. Structural plasticity reveals that brain function is encoded in generative changes to cells that compete with destructive processes driving neurodegeneration. At an adult critical period, experience increases fiber number and brain size in Drosophila. In mammals, the neurotrophins are the key growth factors that link structure and function in the brain. They regulate neuronal survival and connectivity, synaptogenesis and synaptic function, via their tyrosine kinase Trk and p75 receptors. In this talk, I will review the Drosophila neurotrophin system. We showed that Drosophila neurotrophins work via Toll receptors and kinase-less Trk-like receptors to regulate the same processes as in mammals, but via novel molecular mechanisms. Toll and Toll-like receptors in mammals were best known for their functions in innate immunity. I will present our findings on the involvement of Toll receptors in structural brain plasticity. Through their topographic distribution in the brain and their ability to switch between alternative signalling outcomes, Tolls can translate diverse sensory experience into structural change.

Biography: Alicia Hidalgo completed a first degree in biological sciences at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid and received her PhD in Drosophila developmental genetics from the University of Oxford under the supervision of Phil Ingham. She subsequently held postdoctoral positions with Antonio García-Bellido at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (1990–1992) and with Andrea Brand at the Wellcome/CRUK Institute in Cambridge (1993-1997). Alicia launched her independent career in the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, supported by a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellowship (1997) and an EMBO Young Investigator Award (2001). She moved to the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham in 2002, where she is now Professor of Neurogenetics.

Thomas Klausberger

Abstract:  The distributed temporal activity in neuronal circuits of the prefrontal cortex combines emotional information with episodic and spatial memory to guide behavioural action. The cerebral cortex consists of highly diverse neuronal types with distinct synaptic connectivity, molecular expression profile and contribution to network activity. Neurons can be divided into excitatory pyramidal cells, which use glutamate as a neurotransmitter and give both local and long-range axonal projections, and inhibitory interneurons, which are GABAergic and control the activity and timing of pyramidal cells mainly through local axons. These neurons can be further subdivided on the basis of their distinct axo-dendritic arborisations, subcellular post-synaptic targets, and by their differential expression of signalling molecules. We aim to determine how distinct types of neuron support the computational operations of the prefrontal cortex. During my presentation, I will discuss how the temporal dynamics and firing pattern of distinct neurons in the prefrontal cortex evolve during working memory, decision making and gambling.

Biography:  Thomas Klausberger is Head of the Center for Brain Research at the Medical University of Vienna. He studied biochemistry at the University of Vienna and completed his Ph.D. under the supervision of Werner Sieghart before joining Peter Somogyi’s laboratory in the MRC Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit at the University of Oxford, initially as a postdoctoral fellow. Klausberger rose to the rank of MRC Senior Scientist at Oxford before taking up a Professorship at the Center for Brain Research at the Medical University of Vienna. His lab investigates how identified neurons in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus contribute to network operations, oscillations, and cognitive behaviour.

Thomas Klausberger is Head of the Center for Brain Research at the Medical University of Vienna. He studied biochemistry at the University of Vienna and completed his Ph.D. under the supervision of Werner Sieghart before joining Peter Somogyi’s laboratory in the MRC Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit at the University of Oxford, initially as a postdoctoral fellow. Klausberger rose to the rank of MRC Senior Scientist at Oxford before taking up a Professorship at the Center for Brain Research at the Medical University of Vienna. His lab investigates how identified neurons in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus contribute to network operations, oscillations, and cognitive behaviour.

Warren Alpert Foundation Prize 2019

The 2019 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize has been awarded to four scientists for pioneering work in the field of optogenetics, ‘a revolutionary technique that uses light and genetic modification to control the activity of cells in the brain.’ Gero Miesenböck is recognised ‘for the first demonstrations of optogenetic control of neural activity and animal behaviour and for discoveries proving the utility of optogenetics for neurobiological research.’ He shares the prize with Ed Boyden of MIT, Karl Deisseroth of Stanford University and Peter Hegemann of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

The Warren Alpert Foundation, in association with Harvard Medical School, honours scientists whose work has improved the understanding, prevention, treatment or cure of human disease.

The honorees will be recognised at a daylong symposium on 3 October 2019 at Harvard Medical School.

‘The discoveries made by this year’s four honorees have fundamentally changed the landscape of neuroscience,’ said George Q. Daley, dean of Harvard Medical School. ‘Their work has enabled scientists to see, understand and manipulate neurons, providing the foundation for understanding the ultimate enigma—the human brain.’

The Warren Alpert Foundation Prize recognises the work of scientists throughout the world. To date, nearly $5 million have been awarded to 69 scientists. Since the award’s inception in 1987, 10 honorees have gone on to receive a Nobel Prize.

‘The 2019 Warren Alpert Prize for medical research recognises one of the transformative technical advances of the past decade. The ability to selectively turn on neuronal signals with light exposure has made achievable a more refined analysis of neural connections underlying behaviour,’ said Joseph Martin, director and chairman of the board of the Warren Alpert Foundation and former dean of Harvard Medical School.

Gero Miesenböck said: ‘Most studies in neuroscience now include an interventionist element, often at their core. But for all the power of optogenetic control, it’s important to remember that switching things on and off artificially is only the beginning and not the end—the deepest insights typically come when we understand how the brain regulates its own activity. Optogenetic interventions can tell us where to look for these self-regulated switches, but to figure them out requires much more. Our recent work on sleep is a case in point, I think.’