NAS Member Spotlight for World Brain Day 2024: Hongkui Zeng

July 22nd marks the World Federation of Neurology’s 11th annual World Brain Day. Initially designated in 2014, the WFN created the observance to not only further their mission of championing quality neurology and brain health, but also to raise awareness of neurological disabilities and diseases.

To honor World Brain Day, the National Academy of Sciences is featuring one of its members, Hongkui Zeng, Executive Vice President and Director of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Zeng has elevated our understanding of cell types and their connections in the mammalian brain through her research on how different neuronal types work together to process and transform visual information. In 2023, she received the Pradel Research Award and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In a Q&A below, she describes the impact of her research, exciting developments in the field of neuroscience, and what sparked her interest in studying the brain.

Q: How has the choice to make the Brain Atlas open access affected research in the field?

A: Making the Allen Brain Atlases open access to the entire world has truly transformed neuroscience research over the past 20 years. The Allen Institute for Brain Science pioneered the open science approach 20 years ago, which has now become common practice across the research community. Rapid and open sharing of data and research tools can dramatically accelerate the pace of research and discovery. Open science also greatly facilitates collaborations and establishment of common standards that can greatly improve the quality and robustness of research results and findings. All of these will eventually benefit everyone and lead to more rapid advances in disease treatment.

Q: What are some recent developments in your field that have excited you and your peers?

A: There have been some really exciting advancements in neuroscience recently. At the end of last year, we and our colleagues in the US BRAIN Initiative consortium published the complete cell type atlas of the whole mouse brain, which is the first for any mammalian species, using a suite of high-throughput single-cell genomics technologies. Using similar approaches, the consortium also published an initial draft cell type atlas of the human brain. There are also major advancements in creating whole brain connectomes for fruit flies and in adopting the large-scale connectomic technologies to the mouse and human brains. Furthermore, massively parallel brain imaging and recording technologies have been developed to record electrical signals from thousands of cells simultaneously in the living brain. Collectively, these advances at the levels of genes, cells, circuits, and dynamics provide unprecedented opportunities to study the structure and function of the brain.

Q: When did you become interested in studying the brain, and what inspired you?

A: I became interested in studying the brain when I went to graduate school at Brandeis University, where there was a constellation of some of the greatest neuroscience faculty members at the time, from experimental to theoretical. Even though I majored in Biochemistry as an undergraduate and entered the Molecular & Cell Biology PhD program there, all three labs I rotated in were doing brain research, and eventually I decided to study the neurobiology of circadian rhythms in fruit flies.

I became fascinated by how genes can control an animal’s behaviors. And I gradually realized that the brain is a multi-leveled system with genes and behaviors at the opposite ends. In between there are many unique types of cells each expressing a specific set of genes, and these cells are interconnected to form highly complex circuit networks which perform computations by generating various patterns of electrical and chemical signals between cells. Eventually, it is these dynamic patterns of electrical and chemical signals that are transmitted throughout the body to exert behaviors and related physiological responses. There is still so much unknown about the brain at each of these levels, and of course malfunctioning at any level or in any part of the brain could lead to brain diseases. Thus, the complexity and mystery of the brain continues to fascinate me and inspire me to do more research and gain more understanding.