Shortly after his birth, the family returned to Germany, where his father took up a position at the Max Planck Institute for Virus Research in Tübingen.
As a postdoctoral fellow, he worked at Rockefeller University (USA) and at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt am Main.
Bonhoeffer's work focuses on the cellular foundations of learning and memory as well as on the early postnatal development of the brain.
He and his research group were the first to demonstrate the presence of "pinwheels" in the mammalian visual system, using high-resolution imaging techniques.
[6] Further research dealt with nerve growth factors, in particular brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF);[7][8] the functional strengthening of synapses, which is reflected in morphological changes of neurons through the formation of new dendritic spines;[9] the targeted degradation of proteins as a mechanism for the storage of information in the nervous system;[10] and with the process by which many cell contacts that were grown during learning are inactivated but not degraded when they are not used, which should enable much faster relearning.