Henry Markram

The digital reconstruction of a neonatal rat somatosensory cortex, published on 8 October 2015, stands as a primary milestone in the research career of Henry Markram. Born in 1962 in South Africa, this neuroscientist and biophysicist transitioned from his early education at the University of Cape Town to international research roles, eventually establishing a substantial presence at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.

Academic Foundation and Early Research

Markram earned his Bachelor of Science in physiology and the history and philosophy of science from the University of Cape Town. He later completed his PhD in neurobiology in 1991 at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel under the supervision of Menahem Segal. During this period, he identified a link between acetylcholine and memory mechanisms by demonstrating how this neurotransmitter modulates synaptic plasticity. Following his doctoral studies, he served as a Fulbright Scholar at the National Institutes of Health in the United States and worked as a Minerva Fellow in the laboratory of Bert Sakmann at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg.

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Advances in Synaptic Plasticity

While in Germany, Markram and his colleagues discovered calcium transients in dendrites triggered by sub-threshold activity and back-propagating action potentials. He investigated the connectivity of layer 5 pyramidal neurons and developed the concept of spike timing-dependent synaptic plasticity, which highlights how the millisecond-range timing of pre- and post-synaptic action potentials dictates coupling strength between neurons. His later work at the Weizmann Institute, alongside Wolfgang Maass, contributed to the theory of liquid state machine, also known as high entropy computing.

Institutional Leadership and Large-Scale Projects

In 2002, Markram became a full professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, where he founded the Brain Mind Institute. His team later launched the Blue Brain Project to simulate neocortical microcircuitry. In 2013, he led the launch of the Human Brain Project, a massive initiative funded by the European Union. Although the project faced significant criticism regarding its ambitious claims and internal management, leading to his departure from the leadership role, Markram continued his research into the organization of the neocortical column using multi-neuron patch clamp recordings and chemical imaging.

Personal Life and Autism Research

Markram is an Israeli citizen and has been married twice, with five children in total. His son, Kai, is autistic, a personal situation reflected in his biography titled The Boy Who Felt Too Much. Alongside his wife, Kamila Markram, he developed the Intense World Theory. This hypothesis posits that autism results from the hyper-functioning of local neural microcircuits, characterized by hyper-reactivity and hyper-plasticity, which may lead to memory trapping and intense emotional states. In 2007, the couple also co-founded the open-access publisher Frontiers Media.