Florian Engert

Biography

Florian Engert is a Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA). Proclaimed “The Bad Boy of Brain Science” in one of the youtube videos, he aims to develop a multi-scale model describing interactions of the living brain with its environment. With larval zebrafish as an animal research model, the Engert Lab conducts brain wide calcium imaging to describe the circuits that transform sensory information into behavioral responses. Another approach used in his laboratory is the detailed kinematic analysis that enables to understand the algorithms that are implemented during goal-directed behaviors.

Not only does the Engert Lab try to answer fundamental questions of neuroscience such as how neurons and synapses within a circuit perform a given computation, it is also a very much integrated group of fellow colleagues. Their communal online plank challenge conducted via Zoom and very creatively named “The Mask Plank Society” may serve as a perfect example of that. Moreover, the lab’s weekly discussions are open to everyone interested.

Florian Engert received his Ph.D. in physics from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich 1997. He spent the following two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Munich, followed by two more years as a postdoc, first at the University of California, San Diego, and then at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2002, he accepted a position as assistant professor at Harvard University, where he received tenure and was promoted to full professor in 2009.

Talk: "Fish feelings: Motivational internal states in larval zebrafish"

I will discuss how motivational states in larval zebrafish can regulate specific switching between behavioral priorities. In the first part I will explain how the oxytocin system regulates and relays processing of aversive and noxious stimuli, and how this can be extended to states of social isolation. In the second part I will share our results on the role of hypothalamic serotonergic neurons in the regulation of hunger and its influence on switching between exploit vs explore strategies.  

Selected Publications

Ahrens, M.B., Li, J.M., Orger, M.B., Robson, D.N., Schier, A.F., Engert, F., Portugues, R., 2012. Brain-wide neuronal dynamics during motor adaptation in zebrafish. Nature 485, 471–477.

Severi, K.E., Portugues, R., Marques, J.C., O’Malley, D.M., Orger, M.B., Engert, F., 2014. Neural control and modulation of swimming speed in the larval zebrafish. Neuron 83, 692–707.

Dunn, T.W., Mu, Y., Narayan, S., Randlett, O., Naumann, E.A., Yang, C.-T., Schier, A.F., Freeman, J., Engert, F., Ahrens, M.B., 2016b. Brain-wide mapping of neural activity controlling zebrafish exploratory locomotion. Elife 5, e12741.

Randlett, O., Wee, C.L., Naumann, E.A., Nnaemeka, O., Schoppik, D., Fitzgerald, J.E., Portugues, R., Lacoste, A.M.B., Riegler, C., Engert, F., Schier, A.F., 2015. Whole-brain activity mapping onto a zebrafish brain atlas. Nat. Methods 12, 1039–1046.

More information

EngertLab website