Mark Harnett

Listening to Neurons

Mark Harnett studies how the biophysical features of individual neurons, including ion channels, receptors, and membrane electrical properties, endow neural circuits with the ability to process information and perform the complex computations that underlie behavior. As part of this work, the Harnett lab was the first to describe the physiological properties of human dendrites, the elaborate tree-like structures through which neurons receive the vast majority of their synaptic inputs. Harnett also examines how computations are instantiated in neural circuits to produce complex behaviors such as spatial navigation.

More Research

The laboratory focuses on the role of dendrites, the elaborate structures through which neurons receive the vast majority of their synaptic inputs. The thousands of inputs a single cell receives can interact in complex ways that depend on their spatial arrangement and on the biophysical properties of their respective dendrites. For example, operations such as coincidence detection, pattern recognition, input comparison, and simple logical functions can be carried out locally within and across individual branches of a dendritic tree. Harnett addresses the hypothesis that the brain leverages these fundamental integrative operations within dendrites to increase the processing power and efficiency of neural computation. He focuses in particular on sensory processing and spatial navigation, with the goal of understanding the mechanistic basis of these brain functions.

To address how biophysical mechanisms influence circuit-level computation, the Harnett lab combines 2-photon imaging and electrophysiological recording techniques with novel rodent behavioral paradigms to measure the activity of neuronal populations as well as subcellular compartments. This allows evaluation of dendritic mechanisms as a function of circuit dynamics during complex behaviors.

Biography

Mark Harnett joined the McGovern Institute in 2015 and is currently an associate professor and graduate officer in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. He received his BA in Biology from Reed College in Portland, Oregon and his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining MIT, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus where he worked with Jeff Magee.

Honors and Awards

Virtual Tour of Harnett Lab

Recent Publications

Newman, JP, Zhang, J, Cuevas-López, A, Miller, NJ, Honda, T, van der Goes, MH et al.. ONIX: a unified open-source platform for multimodal neural recording and perturbation during naturalistic behavior. Nat Methods. 2024; :. doi: 10.1038/s41592-024-02521-1. PubMed PMID:39528678 .

Fischer, LF, Xu, L, Murray, KT, Harnett, MT. Learning to use landmarks for navigation amplifies their representation in retrosplenial cortex. bioRxiv. 2024; :. doi: 10.1101/2024.08.18.607457. PubMed PMID:39229229 PubMed Central PMC11370392.

Yaeger, CE, Vardalaki, D, Zhang, Q, Pham, TLD, Brown, NJ, Ji, N et al.. A dendritic mechanism for balancing synaptic flexibility and stability. Cell Rep. 2024;43 (8):114638. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2024.114638. PubMed PMID:39167486 PubMed Central PMC11403626.

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Faculty

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Disorder Areas

Listening to Neurons

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Biography

Honors and Awards

Virtual Tour of Harnett Lab

How adult brains learn the new without forgetting the old

Finding some stability in adaptable brains

Finding the way

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Recent Publications