Martin heisenberg biography

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Martin Lewis Perl — (24 juin 1927 à New York) est un physicien américain. These innovations enabled precise dissection of how genetic factors modulate sensory-motor integration, fostering a holistic understanding of brain-behavior relationships that has become standard in the field.^[10] For instance, his establishment of mass histological screening identified structural brain mutants like swiss cheese, revealing genetic bases for neurodegeneration with implications for human disorders.^[10]Through his leadership at the University of Würzburg, Heisenberg trained numerous key figures in neurogenetics, including Alexander Borst, who conducted graduate work under him from 1982 to 1984 and later advanced computational models of visual processing.^[27] Other trainees, such as Björn Brembs, extended his legacy in studying spontaneous behavior and decision-making.^[27] This mentorship helped transform Würzburg into a major hub for fly neurogenetics, exemplified by the creation of the Würzburg hybridoma library for monoclonal antibodies targeting brain proteins, which facilitated large-scale gene identification and circuit mapping.^[10] A 2009 special issue of the Journal of Neurogenetics honored his retirement, underscoring his enduring influence on the discipline.^[28]Post-retirement, Heisenberg continued contributing to neurogenetics, particularly on brainplasticity.

Post-training increases in Kenyon cell fiber volume and synaptic complexity were observed in wild-type flies, correlating with memory consolidation, whereas such adaptations were absent or altered in memory mutants like amnesiac. He served as President of the International Society for Neuroethology from 2007 to 2010 and received the Karl-Ritter-von-Frisch-Medal in 2006, along with an honorary doctorate from Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse in 2009.

In 1989, he was elected to the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Germany's oldest academy and a leading forum for natural sciences.^[3] In 1998, Heisenberg became a member of Academia Europaea, the pan-European academy that honors excellence in scholarship across disciplines.^[14] Earlier, in 1976, he was elected to the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), recognizing his early impacts in molecular biology and genetics.^[29] He was also elected to the Academy of Sciences at Göttingen in 1999 and to the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2001, further affirming his standing in German scientific circles.^[1]Among his notable awards, Heisenberg received the Karl Ritter von Frisch Medal in 2006 from the German Zoological Society, awarded for outstanding achievements in zoology and behavioral biology, particularly his work on sensory systems and learning in insects.^[1] In 2009, he received an honorary doctorate from Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse.^[1] From 2007 to 2010, he served as President of the International Society for Neuroethology.^[1] In 2015, during his long tenure at the University of Würzburg, he was honored with the Röntgen Medal, the university's highest distinction for exceptional scientific contributions and service to the institution.^[12] These honors underscore his foundational role in advancing neuroethology through genetic approaches, building on his professorship in genetics and neurobiology at Würzburg since 1975.

Named lectureships and visiting positions

Key contributions include foundational studies on the fly's visual system, summarized in his 1984 book Vision in Drosophila co-authored with Reinhard Wolf, and investigations into memory traces in the mushroom bodies, revealing their role in olfactory learning and other associative processes. He challenged claims by researchers like Benjamin Libet and others who interpret brain activity as predetermining decisions, asserting instead that such interpretations overlook the active role of organisms in generating their own behavioral options.^[32]Central to Heisenberg's argument is the phenomenon of operant learning in fruit flies, where individuals spontaneously choose actions that modify their environment, such as turning in a flight simulator to alter visual stimuli.

His goal is to establish a basic behavioral model of the brain. In a 2020 study, he co-authored research demonstrating that a map of Toll receptors in the Drosophilabrain underlies experience-dependent structural remodeling of Kenyon cells in the mushroom body, providing a molecular mechanism for how environmental inputs drive neural adaptation.^[26]

Awards and distinctions

Academic honors and memberships

The elder Heisenberg's groundbreaking work in theoretical physics, including matrix mechanics and the foundational principles of quantum theory, permeated the family environment, fostering a deep appreciation for scientific inquiry.^[5]The Heisenberg family experienced significant upheaval during and after World War II, with Werner Heisenberg serving as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin while the family sought safety away from urban centers.

This appointment allowed Heisenberg to integrate genetic approaches with electrophysiological methods in fly vision research, fostering US-German academic ties.^[1][30]In 1997, Heisenberg was appointed Ida Beam Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa, an endowed lectureship supporting distinguished scholars in the biological sciences, during which he delivered talks on the genetic basis of learning in Drosophila, drawing on his expertise in fly behavior.^[1]That same year, he served as Visiting Professor at the Janelia Farm Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where he advised on advanced imaging techniques for studying neural circuits in fruit flies.^[14][1]In 2011, Heisenberg was honored as Einstein Professor by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a prestigious visiting fellowship that facilitated lectures and collaborations in Shanghai on the neurobiological mechanisms of memory formation, reflecting his global influence in the field.^[31]Post-retirement invitations, such as those following the 2009 special issue of the Journal of Neurogenetics dedicated to his career—"Drosophila Neurogenetics: The Heisenberg Impact”—continued to affirm his ongoing role in shaping international discourse on fly behavior and genetics, leading to further guest lectures at symposia worldwide.^[10]

Philosophical perspectives

Views on free will

Motivated in part by his family's scientific heritage, including his father Werner Heisenberg's legacy in physics, this training solidified his expertise in molecular biology and genetics.^[1]

Professional career

Early research positions

Götz, where he began his research on the brain and behavior of Drosophila melanogaster, focusing initially on visual behavior and employing genetic methods to dissect neural mechanisms.^[1][3]During his tenure at the Max PlanckInstitute from 1968 to 1975, Heisenberg established his research focus on the fruit fly's visual system, developing experimental paradigms to study optomotor responses and pattern recognition at the genetic level.^[1] He collaborated closely with Reinhard Wolf, a fellow researcher in Tübingen, on foundational experiments examining fly vision, which involved behavioral assays in flight simulators to link genetic mutations to specific visual deficits.

In 1975, he joined the University of Würzburg as Professor of Genetics, where he headed the Department of Genetics and Neurobiology until his retirement in 2008, after which he became ProfessorEmeritus and served as a visiting professor at the Janelia Farm Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.^[1]Throughout his career, Heisenberg's laboratory has been instrumental in developing Drosophila as a model for studying complex behaviors, including visual pattern recognition, operant conditioning, selective attention, and motivation.

Dezember 1901 in Würzburg; † 1. In addition, Heisenbergcontributed a number of essays on the topics of science in society, perception, as well as the question of the freedom of the will. His early studies of the fly visual system are summarized in a book "Vision in Drosophila" (1984; with R. Wolf). His pioneering screens for behavioral mutants, such as the identification of the optomotor-blind gene through optomotor response assays, linked specific genetic alterations to disruptions in visual processing and brain development, providing foundational insights into how genes orchestrate neural circuits underlying behavior.^[10] This approach has extended beyond invertebrates, influencing studies of conserved pathways in emotional behaviors like anxiety and depression, which share genetic and neuroanatomical parallels with vertebrate systems.^[10]Heisenberg advanced neuroethology by developing methodologies that combine ethological observations of natural behaviors with genetic tools, such as enhancer-trap constructs for visualizing cell-specific gene expression in the visual system and optophysiology techniques using DNA-encoded probes for functional neural recording and stimulation.

Originally identified in classical odor-shock paradigms, rut deficits impair short-term olfactory memory formation in the MBs by disrupting coincidence detection between odor and reinforcement signals.^[23] Heisenberg extended these findings to visual operant learning, where rut¹ mutants exhibited severe impairments in associating visual cues with punishment, performing no better than controls after training, while other learning mutants like dunce showed milder effects.

Drawing from ablation and genetic studies, it highlighted how structural changes in these lobes correlate with memory formation, influencing models of olfactory circuits and cited over 1,200 times as a key reference for insect neurogenetics.^[39]Reviews and EssaysHeisenberg's 2009 commentary in Nature, "Is free will an illusion?", offered a neurobiological perspective on agency, critiquing deterministic interpretations of brain activity by citing Drosophila operant behaviors where spontaneous choices precede reinforcement.

Jahrhunderts und Nobelpreisträger. These studies revealed that Drosophila possesses distinct visual channels for motion detection and pattern recognition, with the optomotor response primarily driven by wide-field motion detectors in the optic lobes.^[17]In collaboration with Reinhard Wolf, Heisenberg identified elementary pattern detectors in the fly brain responsible for recognizing simple features like edges and corners, which contribute to behaviors such as object fixation.^[18] Their work demonstrated that flies can fixate on salient patterns, such as vertical bars, by generating compensatory yaw torques, indicating the presence of short-term visual memory traces that persist for seconds to minutes to guide orientation.^[19] Key findings included the retinotopic matching mechanism, where pattern recognition remains invariant to retinal position, enabling robust detection across the visual field.^[18]Heisenberg employed genetic mutants to map visual pathways, notably the optomotor-blind (omb) mutants, which lack large tangential neurons in the lobula plate and exhibit severely impaired motion detection but retain some pattern fixation capabilities.