Visiting Speakers

Andre Fenton, PhD - Professor, NYU

 Feb 14, 2022 @ 4:00 p.m.

Professor of Neural Science
NYU

I study how brains store experiences as memories, and how the expression of knowledge activates information that is relevant without activating what is irrelevant. My laboratory uses molecular, electrophysiological, behavioral, engineering, and theoretical methods to investigate these fundamental and interrelated issues in neuroscience.

In work with Todd Sacktor's laboratory, we identified protein kinase M zeta (PKMzeta) as a key molecular component of long term memory. PKMζ is a persistently active kinase that maintains enhanced electrical communication at the synapses between neurons. We discovered PKMζ's role in long-term memory storage by infusing ZIP, a selective inhibitor of PKMζ, into specific brain areas. Long-term memory for a particular place was erased after infusing ZIP into hippocampus a day, even a month after rats learned a place avoidance task. Importantly, ZIP did not alter baseline synaptic activity nor did it impair the rat's ability to relearn and remember the same information if it was retrained after the erasure. Subsequent work has shown that PKMζ is involved in memory storage in many parts of the brain. Our initial work on PKMζ and memory was selected as one of the ten "Breakthroughs of the Year 2006" by the editors of Science, and received substantial attention in the popular media, including the New York Times. We are continuing to study PKMζ's role in the synaptic organization of memory and in maintaining memory-related brain activity.

Neural coordination
We are investigating the role of the hippocampus in controlling how we choose relevant information to process, by studying the interaction of memories and neural activity in signaling information from multiple spatial frames. While rats and mice solve problems that require using relevant information and ignoring distractions, we make recordings from multiple sites and use computational tools to decode information from these recordings about cognitive variables like current location, memory, attention, and cognitive control. Evidence from this work suggests that neural activity is exquisitely coordinated on multiple time scales from milliseconds to minutes, so that neurons that represent the same information discharge together in time, but are desynchronized when representing conflicting information. We are studying specific disturbances of this neural coordination in rat and mouse models of schizophrenia, intellectual disability, autism, depression, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury.

Recording electrical brain activity
We have developed an inexpensive, miniature, wireless digital device for recording electrical brain activity from rats that have spontaneous seizures and abnormalities of neural coordination. By making recordings that last days to weeks, we can characterize abnormalities in the coordinated electrical activity that leads up to seizures. Our goal is to learn whether this activity underlies cognitive impairments, and whether behavioral and pharmacological interventions can attenuate the neural and cognitive abnormalities. Together with business and engineering partners, we have developed our brain-recording technology for medical applications.

Student Moderator:  Uday Chockanathan

Michael Burton, PhD - Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, Neuroimmunology and Behavior Research Group P.I.
Department of Neuroscience
University of Texas at Dallas

 Mar 10, 2022 @ 4:00 p.m.

Communication between the immune and nervous system drives adaptive behaviors important for survival, like sickness and pain. Recent findings, suggested that different cells in this conversation play a lead role in behavioral development in a sex-specific fashion. This talk will reveal initial studies that utilize molecular genetics and other cutting edge approaches to determine cell and sex specific roles of acute and the development of chronic pain states.

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Host: Department of Neuroscience Presents Neuroscience Faculty Candidate Seminar

Shane Liddlelow, PhD - Asst. Professor, NYU Langone Health

 Mar 14, 2022 @ 4:00 p.m.

Astrocytes are the most abundant cells in themammalian central nervous system (CNS). They areintegral to brain and spinal-cord physiology andperform many functions important for normalneuronal development, synapse formation, andproper propagation of action potentials. We stillknow very little, however, about how thesefunctions change in response to immune attack,chronic neurodegenerative disease, or acutetrauma.

Our work focuses on the mechanisms that inducedifferent forms of reactive astrocytes, and howthese reactive cells interact with other cells in theCNS in a positive or negative way. We use highthroughput single cell and bulk RNA sequencing, andspatial transcriptomics to investigate theheterogeneity of astrocytes in multiple species. Wealso take advantage of genetic engineering andmodern in vitro modeling to interrogate diseasemechanisms and interaction with other CNS cellsthat change between health and disease. We aim toapply this knowledge to reactive astrocytes inhuman disease, and believe that the discovery ofastrocytes with different reactive states hasimportant implications for the development of newtherapies for CNS injury and diseases.

Ultimately, we aim to provide a morecomprehensive understanding of what astrocytesdo in disease and how we might ameliorate diseaseby targeting astrocytes
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Host: The Neuroscience Graduate Program

Emily Coderre, PhD - Assistant Professor, Univ. of Vermont

 Apr 04, 2022 @ 4:00 p.m.

Bio:

Dr. Coderre studies the cognitive neuroscience of language using neuroimaging techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Her research examines the cognitive processes underlying language in both typically-developing populations and in special population such as bilinguals and individuals with autism. She is particularly interested in how we understand the meaning of language during word, sentence, and narrative comprehension, and in how such understanding is impaired in autism. Her work aims to better understand the mechanisms of language deficits in autism in order to design more effective treatment interventions.

Abstract:

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder(ASD) often have difficulties with integratingthe meaning, or semantics, of stimuli. Thesedifficulties with semantic integration may play acentral role in the well-documented difficultieswith language comprehension among many ofthese individuals. However, some research hassuggested that individuals with ASD do not havedifficulties integrating the meaning of non-linguistic stimuli like pictures. This asymmetricpattern of difficulties between linguistic andnon-linguistic modalities suggests potentialalterations in semantic processing mechanismsthat are specific to language, rather thanarising from a domain-general alteration insemantic processing more generally. In this talkI will present several studies comparing thesemantic integration of linguistic stimuli (i.e.,written words) and non-linguistic stimuli (i.e.,pictures) between individuals with ASD andtypically developing individuals. These studiesmake use of various imaging techniques,including electroencephalography (EEG) andfunctional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),to pinpoint the precise timecourse and neuralconnectivity patterns that characterizesemantic integration processes acrossmodalities in individuals with ASD.

Student Moderator:  Kathryn Toffolo

Host: The Neuroscience Graduate Program

Dan O'Connor, PhD - Associate Professor, Associate Professor, Department of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University

 Sep 15, 2022 @ 4:00 p.m.

The brain generates complex sequences of movements that can be flexibly configured based on behavioral context or real-time sensory feedback. I will discuss recent work from my laboratory on the neural basis of such flexible movement sequences of the tongue. I will focus on our studies of the sensorimotor cortex in mice that are performing a novel “sequence licking” task. The overall goal of these studies is to understand the high-level control of orofacial behaviors. I will show data that delineate functions of a set of cortical areas important for touch-guided movement of the tongue.

 Medical Center | K-307 (3-6804)

Host: Brain & Cognitive Sciences

Qiang Chang, PhD - Professor, Medical Genetics and Neurology University of Wisconsin-Madison, Director, Waisman Center

 Oct 13, 2022 @ 4:00 p.m.

Rett syndrome (RTT) is a debilitating neurodevelopmental disorder primarily affecting girls. Mutations in the X-linked methyl-CpG binding protein 2 (MECP2) are found in more than 95% of the patients. Over the last two decades, mice and human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) engineered to carry Mecp2/MECP2 mutations have been generated for studying the disease mechanisms and developing therapies. At the cellular level, RTT etiology is complex, because MeCP2 is expressed in all cell types in the brain. To fully understand the cellular mechanism of RTT, it is important to study both cell autonomous and non-cell autonomous phenotypes in all relevant brain cell types. The recent focus of the Chang lab has been on the role of astrocytes in RTT disease progression, which will be the topic of this talk.

 Medical Center | K-207 (2-6408)

Host: Department of Neuroscience and the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience

Michael V. Sofroniew, MD, PhD - Distinguished Professor, University of California at Los Angeles

 Oct 17, 2022 @ 4:00 p.m.

Astrocytes respond to all forms of central nervous system (CNS) injury and disease with pleiotropic changes referred to as astrocyte reactivity. Although functionally ignored for much of the 20th century, astrocyte reactivity is being revealed as a functionally powerful component of mammalian CNS innate immunity that can influence neurological outcomes in many disorders. Long regarded as a fixed set of homogenous responses, astrocyte reactivity is now emerging as molecularly, structurally and functionally diverse and context dependent. How these diverse responses are regulated in different disorders contexts is not well understood. This seminar will explore the questions of (i) What is astrocyte reactivity and how does it differ in different disorders and contexts? (ii) How are differences transcriptionally regulated? and (iii) What do we know about functions and effects? Evidence will be presented that astrocyte reactivity is molecularly diverse and context dependent, and that primary functions of reactive astrocytes include regulating CNS inflammation, protecting neural tissue, maintaining tissue homeostasis and facilitating wound repair.

 Medical Center | K-207 (2-6408)

Host: Neuroscience Graduate Program

Eissa Tahra, PhD - Postdoctoral research associate in Computational Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder

 Oct 27, 2022 @ 4:00 p.m.

 Meliora Hall | Room 366

Host: Neuroscience Diversity Commission, Center for Visual Science, and Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department