Andreas K. Engel

Andreas Karl Engel (born 1961) is a German neuroscientist. He serves as the director of the Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE).

Education Engel studied medicine and philosophy at Saarland University in Homburg, at the Technical University of Munich, and Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany. Following completion of his medical licensing examination (German Staatsexamen), he received his Doctor of Medicine (Dr. med.) from the Technical University of Munich in 1987.

Career From 1987–1995, Engel worked as a post-doctoral fellow with Wolf Singer at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany. Between 1996-2000, he led a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research funded by the Heisenberg Program of the German Research Foundation (DFG). From fall 1997 to summer 1998, he also held an affiliation as a Daimler-Benz Fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study.

From 2000-2002, Engel worked at the Jülich Research Centre as head of the Cellular Neurobiology Group at the Institute for Medicine. In 2002, he was appointed to the Chair of Neurophysiology at UKE. He is a member of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg, and a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. From 2011 to 2023, he has served as coordinator of Collaborative Research Centre SFB 936 "Multi-Site Communication in the Brain" (with C. Gerloff, Dept. of Neurology, UKE).

Research Engel has become known by his work on the "binding problem". His research examines the hypothesis that temporal synchrony serves for dynamic coordination of signals in the brain. In addition to working on the experimental validation of this hypothesis, Engel pursues research on its cognitive and theoretical implications.

During his postdoctoral work with Wolf Singer at the Max Planck Institute, Engel participated in studies demonstrating the relevance of neural synchrony, in particular of so-called gamma waves, for processing perceptual information. The group provided evidence that temporal correlations can facilitate binding of features into coherent sensory representations. Work from Engel's laboratory has also examined relations between neural synchrony and visual awareness, as well as the functional role of neural synchrony for sensorimotor coupling.

In the past 20 years, Engel's group has extended this research to the human brain using EEG and MEG in combination with source modeling techniques. Studies have investigated neuronal oscillations and synchrony in relation to perceptual processing, attention, working memory, decision-making and consciousness. Recent work on interactions among visual, auditory and tactile systems suggests a role of temporal binding in multisensory integration. The group has developed novel methods for electrophysiological analysis of resting state network activity. These approaches have been applied to study of network dysfunction in patients with movement disorders, multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia, as well as research on pain, and altered networks following early sensory deprivation.

Engel also investigates implications of these neurophysiological findings for theories of perception, cognition and action. Recent work examines connections between neural dynamics and enactive approaches to of cognition, including the grounding of cognition in sensorimotor coupling.

Honors and awards 1995-2000, Heisenberg-Fellowship, German Research Foundation (DFG) 1997-1998 Daimler-Benz Fellowship at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study, Germany 2008, elected as member of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg, Germany 2011, award of an ERC Advanced Grant, European Research Council (with P. König, University of Osnabrück) 2023, award of a second ERC Advanced Grant, European Research Council 2024, elected as member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Germany

Selected publications

Senkowski D, Engel AK (September 2024). „Multi-timescale neural dynamics for multisensory integration“. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 25 (9): 625–42. doi:10.1038/s41583-024-00845-7. PMID 39090214