Faculty

Franz Weber, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Neuroscience

Department: Neuroscience

Graduate Group Affiliations

Contact information

Department of Neuroscience,
Chronobiology Program,
Perelman School of Medicine,
University of Pennsylvania
10-132 Smilow Research Center
3400 Civic Center Blvd, Bldg 421
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Office: 215-898-0254

Email:
fweber@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Publications

Search PubMed for articles

Education:
B.Sc. (Bioinformatics)
Ludwig Maximilians University Munich / Technical University Munich, 2006.
M.Sc. (Neurosciences)
Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, 2009.
PhD (Systemic Neurosciences)
Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, 2011.

Links
Search PubMed for articles
Lab webpage

Permanent link

SOM Home » BGS Home » NGG Home » Faculty

Description of Research Expertise

Research Interests

We are interested in the neural and homeostatic mechanisms controlling REM sleep and the functional role of this brain state in emotional memories and behaviors.

Research Projects

We study REM sleep and its functional roles in the mouse model. Our lab employs a wide range of methods including optogenetics, in vivo electrophysiology, calcium imaging, viral tracing and quantitative modeling to disentangle the neural and homeostatic mechanisms controlling REM sleep. We further seek to develop a circuit-based understanding of how REM sleep affects emotional behaviors in health and disease.

Keywords

Sleep, REM sleep, neural circuits, in vivo electrophysiology, calcium imaging, modeling, optogenetics, viral traching, Chronobiology, gene profiling

Selected Publications

J. Hong, K. Choi, M.V. Fuccillo, S. Chung, F. Weber: Infralimbic activity during REM sleep facilitates extinction memory consolidation. Current Biology 34(10): 2247-2255.E5, May 2024.

J. Hong, D. Lozano, K.T. Beier, S. Chung, F. Weber : Prefrontal cortical regulation of REM sleep. Nature Neuroscience 26(10): 1820-1832, Oct 2023.

A.L. Schott, J. Baik, S. Chung, F. Weber : A medullary hub for controlling REM sleep and pontine waves. Nature Communications 14(1): 3922, Jul 2023.

J.A. Stucynski, A.L. Schott, J. Baik, S. Chung, F. Weber : Regulation of REM Sleep by Inhibitory Neurons in the Dorsomedial Medulla. Current Biology 32(1): 37-50, Jan 2021.

S.H. Park, J. Baik, J. Hong, H. Antila, B. Kurland, S. Chung, F. Weber : A probabilistic model for the ultradian timing of REM sleep in mice. PLOS Computational Biology 17(8): e1009316, Aug 2021.

Weber F, Chung S, Beier KT, Xu M, Luo L, Dan Y: Control of REM sleep by ventral medulla GABAergic neurons. Nature 526(7573): 435-8, Oct 2015.

Chung S, Weber F, Zhong P, Tan CL, Nguyen TN, Beier KT, Hörmann N, Chang WC, Zhang Z, Do JP, Yao S: Identification of preoptic sleep neurons using retrograde labelling and gene profiling. Nature 545(7655): 477-481, May 2017.

Weber F, Dan Y : Circuit-based interrogation of sleep control. Nature 538(7623): 51-59, Oct 2016.

Weber F, Machens CK, Borst A: Disentangling the functional consequences of the connectivity between optic-flow processing neurons. Nature Neuroscience 15(3): 441-8, Mar 2012.