Julian Hinz

Nice to e-meet you !

I am currently a Postdoc at the Department of Basic Neuroscience in the group of Christian Lüscher, where I am trying to understand how exposure to palatable diets changes the brain circuits involved in hedonic experiences. More specifically I am using optical tools, pre-dominantly miniscope imaging and fiber photometry to monitor neural activity and neuromodulators in the nucleus accumbens.

Before coming to Geneva, I worked with Andreas Lüthi at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI), where I received my PhD. During my time at the FMI, I worked on a number of studies, often helping with data analysis. Two studies of this effort are already published - the first from Julien Courtin and the second from Lema Massi, who investigated the involvment of the BLA in instrumental goal directed behavior and a specific connection from the BLA to the PAG, respectively. You can read my first Paper from my PhD, investigating the specifics of the involvment of BLA processing in stimulus specific value on biorxiv or Nature Communications - with more to come !

During my Masters at the Max Plank Institute in Tübingen (IMPRS), I worked with Aristides Arrenberg and explored how the pretectum and tectum of larval Zebrafish process rotational and translational optic flow and how motion responsive receptive fields are distributed. Moreover I found my passion for building setups, when I developed a spherical arena for accurately displaying visual stimuli, an adaptation of a previously existing cylindrical arena and helped uncover the current limitations of visual stimulation systems.

When I am not in the lab, I am an avid traveler, art enthusiast, lover of theater and opera, skiier, aspiring hobby athlete and bookworm.

I am always happy to talk, please reach out via E-Mail if you’d like to chat or collaborate !