Matthias H. Hennig

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Publications

Research

How does the infant brain compensate for the anatomical and physiological changes before and even long after birth? Why are infants so particularly susceptible to epilepsy? Or why does cognitive decline in dementia often begin many years after pathological changes have a visible effect on the brain?

In all these cases, homeostatic mechanisms play an important role. They allow neurons to compensate for changes due to brain development, learning or degeneration, and are therefore essential for maintaining stable and normal brain function. At the same time however, faulty compensation can also lead to disease. Therefore, a good understanding of these processes will help us to get a better insight into the cause, prevention and potentially cure of certain brain diseases. In addition, the brain's computational power and, in particular, its enormous ability to continuously adapt to the environment, also strongly rely on homeostasis. Understanding how homeostatic processes do this will therefore also inform our understanding of healthy brain function, and perhaps also support the development of technological artifacts with similar capabilities.

We address these questions primarily using computational and mathematical models. The approach is strongly data-driven; models are used as a way of extending and augmenting the analysis of experimental findings and data sets. The overarching goal of this work is to better understand the interactions between cellular processes, neural electrical properties and circuit parameters and development.

We also develop methods for the analysis of recordings from very large neural populations, and are interested in the relation between the biophysics and function of neurons.

More details about some current projects are here.
Information about previous work, including modelling of retinal circuits, can be found here.
If you are not a neuroscientist, you may find the lay summary of my research useful.

Co-workers

Christopher Ball - Neuroinformatics DTC PhD student, working on visual system development and colour vision, 3rd supervisor, jointly with Jim Bednar (Edinburgh) and Anya Hulbert (Newcastle).
Matt Down - Postoc, working on analysis of high density MEA data, jointly with Evelyner Sernagor (Newcastle) and Stephen Eglen (Cambridge)
Renato C. Farinha Duarte - Erasmus Mundus PhD student, working on MEA recordings, 2nd supervisor, jointly with Uli Egert at ALUF, Freiburg, Germany
Oliver Muthmann - Erasmus Mundus PhD student, working on cellular homeostatic processes, 2nd supervisor, jointly with Upinder Bhalla (NCBS, Bangalore, India)
Dagmara Panas - Neuroinformatics DTC PhD student, working on models of neural activity and homeostasis, 1st supervisor, jointly with Luca Berdondini (IIT, Genova, Italy).
Yann Sweeney - Erasmus Mundus PhD student, working on homeostasis of cellular excitability, 1st supervisor, jointly with Jeanette Hellgren Kotaleski (KTH Stockholm, Sweden).
Philip Tully - Erasmus Mundus PhD student, working on dynamics and homeostasis in large neural networks, 2nd supervisor, jointly with Anders Lansner (KTH Stockholm, Sweden).

Collaborations

Luca Berdondini at the IIT, Genova, Italy
Stephen Eglen at DAMTP, Cambridge
Ian Forsythe at the MRC Toxicology Unit, Leicester
Bruce Graham at Stirling University
Conny Kopp-Scheinpflug at the MRC Toxicology Unit, Leicester
Evelyne Sernagor at Newcastle University

Funding

This work is currently funded by a CDA Fellowship from the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) and a research grant from the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

Teaching

The handout for the MSc Neuroscience lecture "Modelling Synaptic Transmission" is here. Please let me know if there are mistakes or important omissions - this handout is constantly improved and extended, and may even be published as a review one day.

VLSI Electrophysiology: For teaching purposes, I have developed software for Tobi Delbrück's VLSI retina chip to visualise spike data and create PSTH's. More information is here. I'd be keen to hear about similar projects elsewhere...

Potential Students: I'm happy to supervise MSc and PhD projects in computational neuroscience, please contact me if you are interested. In particular, potential PhD students should check our Doctoral Training Centre and the Erasmus Mundus Programme EUROSPIN.

Various

My former workplaces: The Computational Neuroscience Group in Stirling (now moved to Göttingen), Computing Science in Stirling and the Neurophysiology in Bochum.