Gero Miesenböck

Associate Head of Department,Waynflete Professor of Physiology

Neural circuits: the interface of cellular and systems neuroscience

Research Themes

Divisional Themes

o  Neuroscience

o  Cell and Molecular Biology

o  Behavioural Science

o  Imaging

o  Genetics and Genomics

Group Members

o  Dennis Kaetzel

o  Andrew Lin, Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow

o  Paul Overton

o  Moshe Parnas

o  Diogo Pimentel

o  Yan Tan

o  Robert D. Roorda

o  Eleftheria Vrontou, EMBO Postdoctoral Fellow

Web / Personal Website
Email /
Tel / 01865 282261
Fax / 01865 272469
PA / Fiona Woods
Email (PA) /
Tel(PA) / 01865 272496
Contact address / Sherrington Building, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PT
Department / Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics
College / Magdalen College

Gero Miesenböck is Waynflete Professor of Physiology. A native of Austria, he received his medical degree from the University of Innsbruck in 1993and then moved to the United States as a postdoctoral fellow with James Rothman. Before coming to Oxford in 2007, he held faculty appointments at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and at Yale University.

Miesenböck is the principal architect of the emerging field of "optogenetics", which develops genetic strategies for observing and controlling the function of brain circuits with light. He uses these optical approaches to read and change the minds of fruit flies (and other species); his current research focuses on the structure and dynamics of circuits involved in sensory processing, memory, action selection, and motor pattern generation.

Miesenböck Research

Neural circuits: the interface of cellular and systems neuroscience

Guided by the notion that biology itself offers some of the most incisive tools for studying biological systems, we rely on basic cellular mechanisms and materials encoded in DNA to record and remote-control the activity of nerve cells in the living brain. Our interests lie at the interface between cellular and systems neuroscience: we aim to understand how excitable cells are arranged into functional circuits, and how the operation of these circuits informs behaviour.

To illuminate circuit mechanisms, we study explants of mouse brains in which specific classes of neurons have been programmed genetically to be light-addressable. This allows us to feed synthetic ‘test patterns’ into the circuitry and trace the transformations of these patterns in optical or electrophysiological recordings, with the intent of revealing the underlying information-processing architectures and computational principles.

To relate circuit states to behaviour, we work with another genetically tractable organism, the fruit fly. We observe or induce changes in the physiological states of genetically defined groups of neurons in the intact brain and correlate them with behavioural states to decipher the neural signals used to represent ‘content’.

Selected Publications

·  Claridge-Chang Adam, Roorda Robert D, Vrontou Eleftheria, Sjulson Lucas, Li Haiyan, Hirsh Jay, and Miesenbock Gero(2009)Writing memories with light-addressable reinforcement circuitry.Cell, 139(2):405-15.

·  Claridge-Chang Adam, Roorda Robert D, Vrontou Eleftheria, Sjulson Lucas, Li Haiyan, Hirsh Jay, and Miesenbock Gero(2009)Writing memories with light-addressable reinforcement circuitry.Cell, 139(2):405-15.

·  Miesenbock Gero(2009)The optogenetic catechism.Science, 326(5951):395-9.

·  Miesenbock Gero(2008)Lighting up the brain.Sci Am, 299(4):52-9.

·  Sjulson Lucas and Miesenbock Gero(2008)Rational optimization and imaging in vivo of a genetically encoded optical voltage reporter.J Neurosci, 28(21):5582-93.

·  Shang Yuhua, Claridge-Chang Adam, Sjulson Lucas, Pypaert Marc, and Miesenbock Gero(2007)Excitatory local circuits and their implications for olfactory processing in the fly antennal lobe.Cell, 128(3):601-12.

·  Sjulson Lucas and Miesenbock Gero(2007)Optical recording of action potentials and other discrete physiological events: a perspective from signal detection theory.Physiology (Bethesda), 22:47-55.

·  Lima Susana Q and Miesenbock Gero(2005)Remote control of behavior through genetically targeted photostimulation of neurons.Cell, 121(1):141-52.

·  Miesenbock Gero and Kevrekidis Ioannis G(2005)Optical imaging and control of genetically designated neurons in functioning circuits.Annu Rev Neurosci, 28:533-63.