Instinctive behaviours, such as parenting, aggression, or mating are orchestrated by evolutionarily sculpted neural circuits. Johannes Kohl showed that a genetically defined group of neurons in the hypothalamus of the brain coordinates the motor, motivational, hormonal, and social aspects of parenting. He discovered that these neurons form non-overlapping pools – each defined by its projection in the brain – which control distinct aspects of parenting. His group recently found that during pregnancy, the hormones estrogen and progesterone change the form and function of parenting-relevant neurons in the brain, and that this is necessary for the onset of parental behaviour. Pregnancy hormones thus remodel the female brain in preparation for parenthood.
Academic Career
Johannes Kohl studied biochemistry at the University of Bayreuth and neuroscience and medicine at the University of Magdeburg, Germany. He then moved to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, where he completed his PhD in neurobiology in 2014. Following two years of postdoctoral research at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA, he split his time between Harvard University and the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour (London, UK) as a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow. He started his own group at The Francis Crick Institute in London in 2019. He is the recipient of the Eppendorf & Science Prize for Neurobiology, the Peter and Patricia Gruber International Research Award of the Society for Neuroscience, and an ERC Starting Grant.
