Hi,

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Benjamin Judkewitz at the Charité medical school, Berlin and  I am interested in the neural mechanisms underlying sensory cognition. Previously, I did my PhD with Jan Benda at the University of Tübingen on the contextual sensory statistics of animal communication.

Contact information

Dr. Jörg Henninger

AG Judkewitz - Charite NeuroCure
Charite Campus Mitte
Hufelandweg 14
10117 Berlin
phone: +49 / 030 - 450 639104

Email: joerg.henninger (at) posteo.de



Brain-wide parallel and hierarchical auditory processing

Many brain functions rely on the interactions of distributed neuronal populations. To expand the available experimental means for brain-wide investigation in vertebrates, my recent work introduced a novel model, the small telost fish Danionella cerebrum, which possesses very advantageous properties for neuroscience: Danionella's brain is accessible to brain-wide optical investigation throughout adulthood, genetically tractable and displays interesting behaviors, such as vocal communication and cue-based navigation. I established the means for fast volumetric whole-brain imaging in Danionella, which I currently use for studying parallel and hierarchical processing in its auditory system.

 



Two-photon imaging stack of the Danionella brain. Danionella's brain remains optically accessible throughout its lifetime.

Oblique plane fluorescence microscopy enables imaging neuronal activity across the whole brain at fast rates.


Biography

My formal education is in biology with focus on animal physiology. Early in my studies I realized that a stronger theoretical foundation than that provided by the standard curriculum would be extremely helpful to make sense of the vast complexity of the animal brain. For my diploma thesis I therefore searched and found the opportunity to learn the basics of theoretical neuroscience with Jan Benda.

For my PhD, I studied the principles of sensory processing using behavioral, physiological and theoretical approaches.

 

I like to take advantage of new technologies to generate and analyze data in innovative ways. Working in the lab of Benjamin Judkewitz provides plenty of opportunity to do so and allowed myself to develop many new skills.


Publications

Hoffmann, M.*, Henninger, J.* (shared first), Veith, J., Richter, L., Judkewitz, B. Blazed oblique plane microscopy reveals scale-invariant inference of brain-wide population activity. Nature Communication

 

Cook, V., Groneberg, A., Hoffmann, M., Kadobianskyi, M., Veith, J., Schulze, L., Henninger, J., Britz, R., Judkewitz, J. (2024), Ultrafast sound production mechanism in one of the smallest vertebrates, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(10).

 

Raab, T., Madhav, M. S., Jayakumar, R. P., Henninger, J., Cowan, N. J., & Benda, J. (2022). "Advances in non-invasive tracking of wave-type electric fish in natural and laboratory settings." Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience.

 

Rajan, G., Lafaye, J., Carbo-Tano, M., Duroure, K., Faini, G., Tanese, D., Panier, T., Candelier, R., Henninger, J., Britz,

R., Judkewitz, B., Gebhardt, C., Emiliani, V., Debregeas, G., Wyart, C., Del Bene, F. (2021). "Evolutionary divergence of locomotion in two related vertebrate species." Cell Reports.

 

Henninger, J., Krahe, R., Sinz, F., & Benda, J. (2020). "Tracking activity patterns of a multispecies community of gymnotiform weakly electric fish in their neotropical habitat without tagging." Journal of Experimental Biology

 

Sinz, F. H., Sachgau, C., Henninger, J., Benda, J., & Grewe, J. (2020). "Simultaneous spike-time locking to multiple frequencies." Journal of Neurophysiology

 

Schulze, L.*, Henninger, J* (shared first), Faustino, AI., Chaigne, T., Kadobianskyi, M., Hakiy, N., Albadri, S., Schuelke, M., Maler, L., Del Bene, F., Judkewitz B. (2018), „Transparent Danionella translucida as a genetically tractable vertebrate brain model“. Nature Methods.

 

Henninger, J, Kirschbaum, F, Grewe, J, Krahe, R, Benda, J. (2018). “Statistics of natural communication signals observed in the wild identify important yet neglected stimulus regimes in weakly electric fish”. Journal of Neuroscience,

 

Henninger, J. “Social interactions in natural populations of weakly electric fish”.

PhD thesis, Tübingen, 2015. Web-link

 

Henninger, J. "Aspects of auditory signal transduction".

Diploma thesis at the Institute for Theoretical Biology, Berlin, with Prof. Dr.  Jan Benda in the computational neuroscience group of Prof. Dr. Andreas Herz. Web-link.