Göttingen Campus Institute for
Dynamics of Biological Networks (CIDBN)

Neef, Andreas, Dr.

Head Neurophysics Lab


  • since 2019 Group leader of the Neurophysics Lab, Campus Institute for Dynamics of Biological Networks
  • 2013–2019 Group leader "Biophysics of neural computation" at the BCCN Göttingen
  • 2006–2013 Bernstein fellow at the BCCN and BFNT Göttingen
  • 2005–2006 Postdoctoral fellow at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience (BCCN), Göttingen
  • 2004–2005 Postdoctoral fellow at the research centre Juelich
  • 2004 PhD in Biochemistry (Dr. rer. nat), University Cologne
  • 2001–2004 PhD student at the institute for biological information processing in the research centre Jülich
  • 2000 Visiting scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Cambridge, Great Britain
  • 2000 Diploma in Physics, University of Jena, Germany
  • 1997–2000 research and graduate student at the Max-Planck research group "Molecular and Cellular Biophysics", Jena
  • 1994–2000 undergraduate and graduate in Physics, University of Jena, Germany



Major Research Interests

My research covers various fields of neuroscience and ion channel biophysics. In my BCCN group Biophysics of neural encoding we focus on those key properties of neuronal systems that determine performance of information encoding. This can be the resupply of vesicles at a synapse or the speed of action potential initiation. My goal is then to obtain a quantitative understanding of the system performance, which includes precision measurements of biopyhsical properties, structure, and function of neuronal elements. Sometimes it also requires the development of new experimental or numerical methods . In collaboration with colleagues and friends I address problems from single molecule diffusion to non-invasive brain stimulation.

Homepage Department/Research Group

Selected Recent Publications

  • Gutnick, T., Neef, A., Cherninskyi, A., Di Cosmo, A., Lipp, H.P., Kuba, M.J. (2023) Recording electrical activity from the brain of behaving octopus. Current Biology, 33, 1171-1178.

    • Anil, S., Soltaninejad, Z., Neef, A., Antal, A., Paulus, W. (2022) TU-165. Theta burst stimulation with varying stimulus pulse durations and directions. Clinical Neurophysiology, 141, 26-27.

    • Zhang, C., Hofmann, D., Neef, A., Wolf, F. (2022) Ultrafast population coding and axo-somatic compartmentalization. PLOS Computational Biology, 18, e1009775.

    • Merino, R. M., Leon-Pinzon, C., Stühmer, W., Möck, M., Staiger, J. F., Wolf, F., Neef, A. (2021) Theta activity paradoxically boosts gamma and ripple frequency sensitivity in prefrontal interneurons. PNAS, 118, e2114549118.

    • Jean, P., Anttonen, T., Michanski, S., de Diego, A. M. G., Steyer, A.M., Neef, A., Oestreicher, D., Kroll, J., Nardis, C., Pangršič, T., Möbius, W., Ashmore, J., Wichmann, C., Moser, T. (2020) Macromolecular and electrical coupling between inner hair cells in the rodent cochlea. Nat Commun. 11, 3208.

    • Revah, O., Stoler, O., Neef, A., Wolf, F., Fleidervish, I. A., Gutnick, M. J. (2019) Dynamic gain analysis reveals encoding deficiencies in cortical neurons that recover from hypoxia-induced spreading depolarizations. J Neurosci, 3147-18.

    • Lazarov E., Dannemeyer M., Feulner B., Enderlein J., Gutnick M. J., Wolf F., Neef A. (2018) An axon initial segment is required for temporal precision in action potential encoding by neuronal populations. Science Advances 4:eaau8621.

    • Keppeler, D., Merino, R. M., Morena, D. L. de la, Bali, B., Huet, A. T., Gehrt, A., Wrobel, C., Subramanian, S., Dombrowski, T., Wolf, F., Rankovic, V., Neef, A. Moser, T. (2018) Ultrafast optogenetic stimulation of the auditory pathway by targeting‐optimized Chronos. The EMBO Journal 37, e99649.

    • Helmer, M., Schottdorf, M., Neef, A. and Battaglia, D. (2017) Gender bias in scholarly peer review. eLife Sciences 6, e21718.

    • Yang, Y., Ramamurthy, B., Neef, A., Xu-Friedman, M. A. (2016) Low Somatic Sodium Conductance Enhances Action Potential Precision in Time-Coding Auditory Neurons. J Neurosci. 36, 11999-12009.

    • Stern, S., Agudelo-Toro, A., Rotem, A., Moses, E., Neef, A. (2015) Chronaxie Measurements in Patterned Neuronal Cultures from Rat Hippocampus. PLoS ONE. 10, e0132577.



Publikationen (Google Scholar)