Tobias Bonhoeffer

Tobias Bonhoeffer (born January 9, 1960 in Berkeley, California) is a German neurobiologist. He is director at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology and head of the department Cellular and Systems Neurobiology.

Tobias Bonhoeffer studied physics at the University of Tübingen and conducted the research for his PhD thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen. Afterwards, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Rockefeller University and at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt. He led an independent research group at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich and was appointed Director at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in 1998. Beginning in summer 2008, Tobias Bonhoeffer is heading the Biomedical Section of the Max Planck Society. On June 28 2008 Bonhoeffer was invited to become the first president of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (I.S.T. Austria), a newly founded high-class research institute for basic research, located in the Vienna Woods.

Scientific focus

Tobias Bonhoeffer's scientific research is focused on the cellular foundations of learning and memory, as well as on the early postnatal development of the brain.

Tobias Bonhoeffer's work led to a number of scientific discoveries. Among these were:
# the optical verification of the existence of "pinwheels" in the mammalian visual system via high-resolution microscopic techniques. "(Bonhoeffer & Grinvald, Nature 1991)"
# the proof that neurotrophins, and in particular the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), play a central role in synaptic plasticity. "(Korte et al., PNAS 1995 & 1996)"
# the observation that the functional strengthening of synapses is caused by morphological changes of the nerve cell, i.e. by the formation of dendritic spines. "(Engert & Bonhoeffer, Nature 1999)"

External links

* [http://www.neuro.mpg.de/english/rd/csn/index.html Homepage of the department of Cellular and Systems Neurobiology]