Andreas Horn is an Associate Professor for Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the Director of Deep Brain Stimulation Research within the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. He is also appointed as the Director for Connectomic Neuromodulation Research at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Andreas & his son 2023 on a beach somewhere in New England

Andreas & his lab

#50: Andreas Horn – Toward Connectomic Deep Brain Stimulation

When I interviewed Marwan Hariz for episode #4, he wrote in an email: “When you finish the series and all interviews, please let me know because then I should interview you as the Grand Finale of this series…”. Throughout the recordings, I heard similar remarks from other guests but also, increasingly, from listeners of the show. After Nico Dosenbach suggested the same in #39, Mike Fox called me and offered to interview me for a round episode of the podcast. With this episode, Stimulating Brains turns #50, and we are indeed flipping the mike so I finally get to experience what I put my guests through on the podcast. Who could have been a better host than Mike for this conversation – as a mentor of tremendous importance, he has been around for (and facilitated) most of the key turning points in my career. Mike and I talk about a lot of things that even covers my youth (thanks to a guest question by Mike Okun), my passion for music, key stages of my career and of course connectomic deep brain stimulation and a thing my lab has begun calling ‘the dysfunctome’. We also reflect on the purpose of the podcast and I get to talk at length about how rewarding an experience it has been for me. We then speculate about its future and the future of the field of neuromodulation. Writing this, I want to take the opportunity to thank you all for the continuous support of Stimulating Brains – and of course for tuning into this episode, as well!

Andreas’ Network Stimulation Laboratory in part sits in Boston and in part in Berlin, but was able to jointly meet during the lab retreat in 2023. Photo: Chiara Maffei

  • Andy has loved computers from the start

  • …and has been an Apple user since before Macs were cool.

  • Early days..

  • Andy’s kids are a big inspiration to him. Here he is (left) 40 years preceding his son wearing the same outfit.

  • Andy & his son

  • Andy and his son on a beach in New England

  • Andy at his first scientific poster in 2010 at the OHBM Barcelona

  • During a visit of the PINS factory in China

  • Enjoying great food while visiting China

  • Together with Igor Ilinsky and Kristy Kultas-Ilinsky on Tempelhofer Feld, when they visited Andy in Berlin

  • The first Lead-DBS workshop, 2016 in Berlin

  • With his lab in Berlin during Waffle-Friday

  • A warm welcome in Boston, when Andy arrived to BWH as Faculty

  • During his postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin

  • Indian Summer during his postdoc at BIDMC in Boston

  • Andy at showing the Lead-DBS poster at OHBM in Hamburg. This exact session was where Andy met Mike Fox for the first time.

  • With his lab at OptoDBS 2022 in Geneva

  • At an industry booth at CNS

  • Andy’s lab in Berlin on the roof of his home before leaving for the second time to Boston.

  • Andy’s lab soon after founding the Netstim lab in 2018

  • Andy’s lab during the lab retreat 2023 in Boston

  • Impressed at a Poster by Hargunbir Singh, which included 3D prints created using Lead-DBS

  • A big hobby for Andy has been to compose, perform and record music. Here he is on stage with an early band project.

  • Photoshooting in Berlin for a music project.

  • In a recording studio with the band ‘Coast’

  • Cover Art for a music album

  • Fotoshoot for a Band project

  • Fotoshoot for a Band project

  • Fotoshoot for a Band project at an abandonded NSA facility in Teufelsberg, Berlin

  • Fotoshoot for a Band project

A big hobby throughout Andy’s life has been to write, compose and record music. While he currently lacks the time to do so, he is looking forward to taking up the hobby again, in the future. Below is a video from his last solo-project Neuston, which features two songs from the album ‘If you won’t save the world’