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Speaker Bio

Eric Racine is the director of the Neuroethics Research Unit and an associate research professor at the IRCM (Institut de Recherches Cliniques de Montréal). He also holds academic appointments at the University of Montreal (Bioethics and Medicine) and McGill University (Neurology and Neurosurgery and Bioethics). Racine, the author of “Pragmatic Neuroethics”, is a pioneer researcher in neuroethics and a prolific author of peer-reviewed papers, chapters, and columns published in leading bioethics, neuroscience, social science, and medical journals. He is a member of the advisory board of the Institute for Neurosciences, Mental Health, and Addiction of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, a member of the DANA Alliance for Brain Initiatives, and an associate editor of the journal Neuroethics. He has been involved in seminal events and international conferences in neuroethics. He was a visiting fellow at the Brocher Foundation (Switzerland), the International Institute of Biomedical Ethics at Uppsala University (Sweden), and the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Munich (Germany).

Faculty Host: Jennifer Singh, Ph.D.

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Research

Raymond's laboratory studies the neural mechanisms of learning. Their research aims to develop an integrated understanding of this fundamental brain function by systematically tracing learning from a sensory experience, through the neural encoding of that experience, to the induction of plasticity at specific loci in the brain, and the ultimate readout of the memory in an altered behavior. Toward this goal, they use a combination of behavioral, neurophysiological and computational approaches.

The model system they study is a form of learning that calibrates the amplitude of eye movements produced by the vestibuloocular reflex (VOR). As an experimental system, learning in the VOR offers many advantages: the neural circuitry mediating the behavior is well understood, putative sites of synaptic plasticity have been identified, and a key neural structure is the cerebellum, which is well suited for both  in  vivo and in vitro studies of the mechanisms of learning. 

One current focus in the lab is to record from the cerebellum in awake behaving animals during the induction of learning in order to identify the neural "error signals" that detect a miscalibration in the VOR and trigger the neural changes underlying learning. Another current project is to study learning in the VOR of transgenic mice, as a tool for linking systems level analysis of learning with cellular and molecular analyses of synaptic plasticity.

Faculty Host: Farzaneh Najafi, Ph.D.
Student Host: Yicong Huang

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Speaker Bio
Eyo (pronounced “A”-“Yo”) was born in Nigeria and grew up in several different countries. He immigrated to the US in 2003 to pursue undergraduate studies at Northwest Missouri State University. He then went on to graduate school at the University of Iowa where he developed a keen interest in real-time imaging of microglia during development under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Dailey. During his time in the Dailey Lab, Eyo reported remarkable migratory capacities for neonatal microglia and elucidated purinergic mechanisms in microglial demise under simulated ischemic conditions. Following his Ph.D studies, Eyo joined the lab of Dr. Long-Jun Wu, first at Rutgers University in New Jersey, then at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota to study microglial-neuronal communications. His postdoctoral research in the Wu Lab uncovered novel physical interaction phenomena between microglia and neurons. These were shown to be governed by glutamate-dependent NMDA receptor signaling that subsequently elicited purine release to activate microglial P2Y12 receptors. Moreover, he showed that this communication axis was beneficial following experimentally-induced seizures. In August 2018, Eyo started his independent lab in the Department of Neuroscience and the Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG) to continue his research on microglia with a focus on the developing brain. 

Faculty Host: Annabell Singer, Ph.D.
Student Host: 

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Research

The research in the Ölveczky lab focuses on the principles and mechanisms by which neural circuits acquire and generate complex behaviors. They are using the rodent as a model system, concentrating our efforts on understanding the process of motor sequence learning. By measuring and manipulating activity in underlying circuits, they hope to arrive at a mechanistic description of how motor sequence are learned and produced by neurons and their connections.

Faculty Host: Jeff Markowitz, Ph.D.

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Research

The Neural Plasticity Research Lab (NPRL) is a highly interdisciplinary and collaborative lab at Emory University. The mission of NPRL is to improve our understanding of the adaptive capacity of the human nervous system in an effort to design novel rehabilitation strategies to mitigate the impact of neurologic injury and disease. The lab utilizes cutting-edge neuroimaging and neurostimulation techniques to study the structure and function of the nervous system in healthy individuals and people with conditions affecting the nervous system. The environment of the NPRL is highly collaborative which offers unique opportunities to study and understand the nervous system across multiple disciplines.  

Faculty Host: Ming-fai Fong, Ph.D.
 

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Speaker Bio
Eric Racine is the director of the Neuroethics Research Unit and an associate research professor at the IRCM (Institut de Recherches Cliniques de Montréal). He also holds academic appointments at the University of Montreal (Bioethics and Medicine) and McGill University (Neurology and Neurosurgery and Bioethics). Racine, the author of “Pragmatic Neuroethics”, is a pioneer researcher in neuroethics and a prolific author of peer-reviewed papers, chapters, and columns published in leading bioethics, neuroscience, social science, and medical journals. He is a member of the advisory board of the Institute for Neurosciences, Mental Health, and Addiction of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, a member of the DANA Alliance for Brain Initiatives, and an associate editor of the journal Neuroethics. He has been involved in seminal events and international conferences in neuroethics. He was a visiting fellow at the Brocher Foundation (Switzerland), the International Institute of Biomedical Ethics at Uppsala University (Sweden), and the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Munich (Germany).

Faculty Host: Jennifer Singh, Ph.D.
 

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Speaker Bio
Hey-Kyoung Lee's research focuses on the cellular and molecular changes that happen at synapses to allow memory storage. The goals of her research include elucidating the mechanisms underlying cross-modal synaptic plasticity and exposing the events that occur in diseased brains.

Lee received her undergraduate degree in biology from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea. She earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and completed postdoctoral training in neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Lee joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2011.

Faculty Host: Ming-fai Fong, Ph.D.
Student Host: 

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Speaker Bio
Mihalas joined the Allen Institute in 2011 from Johns Hopkins University, where he was a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience and subsequently an associate research scientist. As a computational neuroscientist, Mihalas has worked on models of both molecular and systems neuroscience including nervous system development, synaptic plasticity, minimalistic spiking neuron models, self-organized criticality, visual attention and figure ground segregation. His current research interests are aimed at building models to elucidate how large networks of interacting neurons produce cognitive behaviors. At the Allen Institute, Mihalas integrates anatomical and physiological connectivity data to generate models of visual perception in the mouse. To this end, he works to build a series of models of increasing complexity for both individual components, i.e., neurons, synapses, and microcircuits, as well as for large portions of the entire system. This series of models will be compared to the simplified theoretical predictions from statistical physics, information theory and computer vision. Mihalas received his Diploma in physics and M.S. in mathematics from West University of Timisoara in Romania. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology.

Faculty Host: Hannah Choi, Ph.D.

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SPEAKER BIO
Dayo Adewole (they/them or he/him) is a Nigerian-American postdoctoral researcher at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center and University of Pennsylvania. As a neural tissue engineering researcher, they design & develop living, light-controlled neural networks as (1) a model for complex brain pathways and (2) an implantable neural input, with a long-term focus on the development of biological neuroprosthetic devices. Their experience broadly spans bioengineering and robotics—primarily additive manufacturing (3D-printing), the design and fabrication of mechatronic systems, and brain-computer interfaces—and he has trained and served as an educator in several undergraduate and graduate-level engineering courses. Alongside their research and teaching, they designed the core technology for and co-founded InstaHub, a sustainability-focused startup developing easy-to-install embedded sensor systems to help track energy use & reduce waste in buildings.

Faculty Host: Garrett Stanley, Ph.D.
Student Host: Elaida Dimwamwa

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Speaker BIo
Jimena Andersen attended the University of Bath, UK for her undergraduate degree where she studied Biology. She then pursued her Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology at the National Institute for Medical Research, UK under the supervision of François Guillemot. For her postdoc, Andersen worked with Sergiu Paşca at Stanford University, where, among other achievements, she pioneered the generation of cortico-motor assembloids. 

The Andersen lab aims to understand the fundamental processes that shape the development and function of the spinal cord and motor system at cellular and tissue levels and identify vulnerable links that predispose it to disease. Towards this goal the lab uses stem cell-derived organoid and assembloid technologies in combination with state-of-the-art molecular and functional techniques.

Faculty Host: Ming-fai Fong, Ph.D.

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SPEAKER BIO
Richards’ research is at the intersection of neuroscience and AI. His laboratory investigates universal principles of intelligence that apply to both natural and artificial agents. He has received several awards for his work, including the NSERC Arthur B. McDonald Fellowship in 2022, the Canadian Association for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award in 2019, and a CIFAR Canada AI Chair in 2018. Richards was a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at SickKids Hospital from 2011 to 2013. He obtained his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Oxford in 2010 and his B.Sc. in cognitive science and AI from the University of Toronto in 2004. 

Faculty Host: Chethan Pandarinath, Ph.D.
Student Host: Jonathan McCart 

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SPEAKER BIO
Dayo Adewole (they/them or he/him) is a Nigerian-American postdoctoral researcher at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center and University of Pennsylvania. As a neural tissue engineering researcher, they design & develop living, light-controlled neural networks as (1) a model for complex brain pathways and (2) an implantable neural input, with a long-term focus on the development of biological neuroprosthetic devices. Their experience broadly spans bioengineering and robotics—primarily additive manufacturing (3D-printing), the design and fabrication of mechatronic systems, and brain-computer interfaces—and he has trained and served as an educator in several undergraduate and graduate-level engineering courses. Alongside their research and teaching, they designed the core technology for and co-founded InstaHub, a sustainability-focused startup developing easy-to-install embedded sensor systems to help track energy use & reduce waste in buildings.

Faculty Host: Garrett Stanley, Ph.D.
Student Host: Elaida Dimwamwa

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Research
The Berman lab uses theoretical, computational, and data-driven approaches to gain quantitative insight into entire repertoires of animal behaviors, aiming to make connections to the neurobiology, genetics, and evolutionary histories and that underlie them. In particular, they are interested in not just the precise physical and physiological mechanisms behind the performance of a single behavior or motion.

Instead, the primary focus is on the intricate interactions that underlie the temporal ordering, control, and evolution of an organism’s movements, attempting to unearth general organizing principles that apply across species.

These studies include building new computational tools for measuring behavioral structures across many time scales, analyzing the biomechanical basis of rapid control in insects, revealing social context and temporal patterning in rodent vocalizations, and using data from optogenetic and targeted genetic introgression screens to probe the neurological control of behavioral commands and the evolution of behavior in fruit flies.

Faculty Host: Hanna Choi, Ph.D.

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Register for free here!

Featured Presenters:

Dieter Jaeger, Ph.D. 
Department of Biology 
Emory University  

Adriana Galvan, Ph.D. 
Neurology 
Emory University 

The event will begin at 4:00 pm with a keynote lecture from Rui Costa (Allen Institute) and a reception on October 25 in the Marcus Nanotechnology Building, Rooms 1116-1118. On October 26, there will be a full day of presentations from faculty working across neuro-related fields.

Visit the event website for full schedule and details.

Carla Shatz, Ph.D.
Sapp Family Provostial Professor
Professor of Biology and Neuobiology
Catherine Holman Johnson Director of Stanford Bio-X
Stanford University 

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BIO
Carla Shatz’s research aims to understand how early developing brain circuits are transformed into adult connections during critical periods of development. Her work, which focuses on the development of the mammalian visual system, has relevance not only for treating disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, but also for understanding how the nervous and immune systems interact. Shatz graduated from Radcliffe College in 1969 with a B.A. in Chemistry. She was honored with a Marshall Scholarship to study at University College London, where she received an M.Phil. in Physiology in 1971. In 1976, she received a Ph.D. in Neurobiology from Harvard Medical School, where she studied with Nobel Laureates David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel. During this period, she was appointed as a Harvard Junior Fellow. From 1976 to 1978 she obtained postdoctoral training with Pasko Rakic in the Department of Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School. In 1978, Shatz moved to Stanford University, where she attained the rank of Professor of Neurobiology in 1989. In 1992, she moved her laboratory to the University of California, Berkeley, where she was Professor of Neurobiology and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. From 2000-2007 she was Chair of the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and the Nathan Marsh Pusey Professor of Neurobiology. She has received many awards including the Gill Prize in Neuroscience in 2006. In 1992, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1995 to the National Academy of Sciences, in 1997 to the American Philosophical Society, in 1999 to the Institute of Medicine, and in 2011 she was elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London. She was awarded the Gerard Prize in Neuroscience from the 40,000 member Society for Neuroscience, and in 2015, the Gruber Prize in Neuroscience. In 2016, she was the recipient of the Champalimaud Vision Prize, and the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience for the discovery of mechanisms that allow experience and neural activity to remodel brain circuits. In 2018 she received the Harvey Prize in Science and Technology.

Levi Wood Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Georgia Tech

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BIO
Levi Wood joined Georgia Tech as an Assistant Professor in August, 2015. Prior to his current appointment, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. There he used systems biology to elucidate novel signaling mechanisms in Alzheimer’s disease and intestinal inflammation. Wood received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he developed and used a microfluidic platform to identify dominant mechanisms governing vascular geometry during early vascular growth.

Wood’s research focuses on applying systems analysis approaches and engineering tools to identify novel clinical therapeutic targets for inflammatory diseases. These diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), result in expansive physiological changes and are genetically complex. As a result, the development of therapeutic strategies has been challenging. By combining novel engineered in vitro platforms, mouse models, and multivariate computational systems analyses, we will be able to 1) capture a holistic systems-level understanding of these complex diseases and 2) isolate specific mechanisms driving each disease. The ultimate goal of Dr. Wood’s laboratory is to use these tools to identify new mechanisms driving disease onset and progression that will translate to clinically effective therapeutic strategies.

Faculty Host: Ming-fai Fong, Ph.D.
Student Host: Oluwagbemisola (Gbemi) Aderibigbe 

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Randy Buckner, Ph.D.
Sosland Family Professor of Psychology and of Neuroscience
Director of the Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Division
Harvard Medical School

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SPEAKER BIO
Randy Buckner received his B.A. in Psychology and his Ph.D. in Neurosciences from Washington University in St. Louis. He is a member of the Center for Brain Science at Harvard University, and the Director of the Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Division and faculty of the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at the Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School.

Buckner’s laboratory explores the organization and function of large-scale human brain networks that contribute to high-level cognition. Using multiple behavioral, neuroimaging and computational approaches they characterize brain networks and how variation gives rise to differences in network organization and behavior, including dysfunction in neuropsychiatric illness. A series of recent studies comprehensively characterized the organization of the cortex, striatum, and cerebellum with a particular focus on brain association networks important to memory and cognitive control. Using the understanding of normal organization as a foundation, they also explore disturbances in network organization in a range of neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative illnesses. Current projects seek to determine whether dysfunction can be detected prior to clinical symptoms in individuals at risk for illness. Recently their work has expanded to explore the detailed organization of individual brains and how that organization differs across people and changes over time. These investigations use approaches tailored to extract idiosyncratic details of individual brain anatomy as well as approaches to continuous behavioral monitoring via digital phenotyping on smartphones and wearables. This push toward the individual is critical for clinical translation as well as a number of open questions about how transient brain states influence behavior in the real world.

Faculty Host: Doby Rahnev, Ph.D.  
Student Host: Yi Gao, Ph.D.

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Donald Katz, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
Department of Psychology
Brandeis University 

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RESEARCH
We study the neural ensemble dynamics of sensori-motor processes in awake rodents, combining behavior, multi-neuronal electrophysiology, complex analysis and modeling, pharmacology and optogenetics to probe ongoing spiking activity in real-time. Our goal is to eventually move our understanding of this activity forward to the point at which it can be understood online, in single trials, and without reference to external benchmarks (stimulus onset time, for instance) that the animal doesn’t actually know.

The cornerstone of our work involves examination of the neural responses to gustatory (taste) stimuli, which are unique in their reliable non-arbitrariness: a gustatory stimulus hits the tongue laden with meaning—each causes an emotional response (yum or yuck), and each causes a behavior (consumption or rejection); much of our research plumbs these processes.

Furthermore, the potency of taste stimuli is such that rats quickly learn about their properties—whether they poison or nourish—and readily learn ABOUT visual and auditory stimuli that are PAIRED with them. We study these processes as well…a pursuit which has led us into some experiments that don’t involve taste at all.

Faculty Host: Garrett Stanley, Ph.D.  
Student Host: Elaida Dimwamwa

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RESEARCH
Research in the Dickerson lab focuses on how motor output is structured by precise sensory input. To do so, they study the flight control circuitry of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. By studying these questions in Drosophila, they can leverage the powerful genetic toolkit available for the mapping, imaging, and manipulation of neural circuits. The lab directs its attention on structures that are unique to flies, known as the halteres, which act as dual-function gyroscopes that help structure the wingstroke. They take an integrative approach, combining in vivo imaging, muscle physiology, and behavior.

Faculty Host: Simon Sponberg, Ph.D.
Student Host: Varun Sharma

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Bio
Audrey Sederberg, Ph.D. uses theoretical and analytic approaches to uncover the principles of neuronal network dynamics and function. She earned her doctorate in theoretical physics at Princeton University, working with William Bialek, Ph.D. She then conducted postdoctoral research, in experimental neurobiology (University of Chicago) and neural data science (Georgia Tech), and as a fellow in the Theory and Modeling of Living Systems at Emory University. In 2021, she established her research group at the University of Minnesota as a member of the Medical Discovery Team for Optical Imaging and Brain Science. Grounded by close collaboration with experimental labs, her group works at the intersection of experimental and theoretical neuroscience, spanning multiple scales, recording techniques, and species. Her research is supported by a BRAIN Initiative grant from the NIMH and a Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. In 2023, Sederberg was honored with the John Ohlfest Memorial Faculty Mentorship Award for her exceptional teaching and mentoring within Minnesota's Graduate Program in Neuroscience. In August 2023, she returned to Atlanta to join the Schools of Psychology and Physics at Georgia Tech.

Faculty Host: Hannah Choi, Ph.D.

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RESEARCH
The goal of the Emanuel laboratory is to build a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental principles underlying signal processing in the somatosensory system.

The sense of touch is integral to our everyday lives. We seamlessly integrate information about the tactile world with remarkable speed and precision to generate perceptions and guide our actions. How does the brain accomplish this?

They investigate this question using mouse genetic tools, modern neurophysiological approaches, and computational modeling.

Faculty Host: Ming-fai Fong, Ph.D.  

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• August 9 - 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
• August 10 - 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
• August 11 - 9:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

The workshop is targeted to trainees interested in research at the intersection of Neuroscience and ML/AI. The workshop will provide an introduction to deep learning, unsupervised learning, and time series methods, with hands-on coding sessions to get your feet wet. We will also have local (student & faculty) speakers and discussion. To get the most out of the course, students should have some familiarity with Python programming and machine learning basics (e.g., linear algebra, linear regression).

Apply to attend by July 10, 2023.

Selections will be made based on availability (enrollment will be limited to 30 students). For questions or more information, please contact Chethan Pandarinath or Eva Dyer.

This event is organized by Eva Dyer, Chethan Pandarinath, and Anqi Wu, and sponsored by the Georgia Tech/Emory Neural Engineering Center and Computational Neural-Engineering Training Program!

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Chris Rodgers, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Neurosurgery
Emory University

*Lunch provided for in-person attendees

BIO
Chris Rodgers is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Emory University. He grew up in Kentucky and went to McGill University for his bachelor's in Electrical Engineering. His passion for neuroscience began when he first heard the sound of action potentials, recorded from a blowfly during an NSF summer research program at the University of Maryland. He completed a PhD in Neuroscience at Berkeley studying auditory and prefrontal cortex in a new rat model of selective attention. His postdoctoral work at Columbia showed how circuits in the somatosensory cortex enable mice to recognize shape. In 2022, Chris started his faculty position at Emory. His lab, the Perception and Action Lab, seeks to understand how sensory and motor brain regions work together during free behavior.

ABSTRACT
How do we explore and learn about our world? In nature, animals do not passively await stimuli, as they typically must do in the laboratory. Instead, they  actively seek out sensory information—for instance, to find food or shelter. I will first present a summary of my postdoctoral work, which showed how mice recognize different shapes using their whiskers. We used a new method called behavioral decoding to show what sensorimotor strategies mice used to recognize shapes, and we identified an efficient formatting for those strategies in somatosensory cortex. Next, I will present new work from my own lab. We have developed an active sound-seeking task for mice, in which they use head and body movements to find sound sources. We hypothesize that sensory and motor brain regions exchange predictive signals to compute how best to move the body to localize the sound. In future work we plan to identify how central sensorimotor plasticity enables resilience to sensory loss, with the ultimate goal of rationally engineering neural interventions to restore healthy sensorimotor function.

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Anita Devineni, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Biology 
Emory University

ABSTRACT
How does the brain process sensory cues to generate adaptive behaviors that are innate, yet flexible? My lab investigates this question in the taste system of the fruit fly Drosophila, which offers unique tools to study how individual neurons contribute to neural circuit computations. I will discuss ongoing work to characterize the architecture and function of central taste pathways in the fly brain. We are using calcium imaging, optogenetics, high-resolution behavioral assays, and connectomic analyses to study how taste pathways transform sensory representations into motor actions.

RESEARCH
In the Devineni lab, we study how the brain integrates information from our internal and external worlds. An animal’s survival depends on interpreting cues from the outside world and selecting an appropriate behavioral response, such as hiding when a predator’s scent is detected. Moreover, behavioral flexibility is crucial for survival. For example, a hungry animal may prioritize finding food over staying hidden. A fundamental challenge in neuroscience is to understand how the brain integrates internal and external cues to generate flexible behavior.We address these questions in the fruit fly taste system. The taste system is a great model to study how the brain integrates different signals to generate flexible behavior. We use our sense of taste to determine what to eat, and our responses to food are profoundly gated by internal signals such as hunger, experience, and reward. The fruit fly Drosophila offers a wiring diagram of the brain and genetic tools to study neural circuits at single-cell resolution. We combine a broad range of approaches, from molecular and cellular studies to optogenetics, functional imaging, connectomics, behavior, and computational analysis and modeling. Our goal is to achieve a mechanistic understanding of how neural circuits integrate and transform information, and how these mechanisms are dysregulated in models of disordered behavior.

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Til Ole Bergmann, Ph.D.
Associate Professor (W2) of Neurostimulation
Deputy Head of Neuroimaging Center (NIC) 
NeuroImaging Center (NIC), Johannes Gutenberg University Medical Center, Mainz, Germany
Group Leader AG Neurostimulation 
Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research (LIR), Mainz, Germany

*Lunch provided for in-person attendees

ABSTRACT
Functional neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as well as electro- and magnetoencephalography (EEG/MEG), serve well to study spontaneous or task-related neuronal activity as correlates of specific cognitive functions in the human brain. However, to infer causality of brain activation for cognition, the former must be manipulated experimentally. This is possible in healthy humans with the help of non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), transcranial electric stimulation (tES), and since recently also transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS). Importantly, NIBS can also be combined with fMRI as well as EEG/MEG, either concurrently (online) or consecutively (offline). Online approaches, assessing the immediate neural response to stimulation, can be used to (i) quantify neuronal network properties such as excitation, inhibition, or connectivity, (ii) interfere with ongoing spontaneous or task-related activity and thus affect behavioral performance, or (iii) modulate the level and timing of neuronal activity, e.g., trying to mimic neuronal oscillations in behaviorally relevant manner. In contrast, offline approaches can be utilized to either (iv) inhibit or (v) facilitate local neuronal excitability via the induction of synaptic plasticity, assessing its subsequent effects on neuronal activity and behavior. In this talk, I will discuss the different approaches and challenges with respect to their combination with fMRI and EEG, in particular concurrent TMS-fMRI and TMS-EEG, and highlight their potential as well as the caveats for inferring causality from NIBS studies in cognitive neuroscience. I will also introduce the novel approach of brain state-dependent brain stimulation, which allows to control NIBS in real-time based on the online assessment of specific oscillatory states, providing a unique opportunity to causally interact with ongoing neuronal oscillations to study its role in information processing and synaptic plasticity.

BIO/RESEARCH
I am a biological psychologist / cognitive neuroscientist interested in the function of neuronal oscillations in cognition, in particular for the organization of information processing and the gating of synaptic plasticity in the wake and sleeping human brain. My methodological focus is on the simultaneous combination of non-invasive transcranial brain stimulation techniques with neuroimaging and electrophysiology and the development of novel approaches, such as brain state-dependent brain stimulation.

I graduated in Psychology at the University of Kiel (Germany), and did my PhD with Prof. Hartwig Siebner on the oscillatory underpinnings of memory consolidation during sleep using concurrent tES-TMS, EEG-fMRI, and TMS-EEG. During a subsequent PostDoc with Prof. Ole Jensen at the Donders Institute for Brain Cognition and Behaviour in Nijmegen (Netherlands) I then studied the function of alpha oscillations for visuospatial attention using concurrent TMS-EEG and tES-MEG approaches. Following an interim faculty appointment at the Institute of Psychology back in Kiel, I moved to Tübingen (Germany) to work with Prof. Ulf Ziemann on real-time EEG-triggered TMS to study the function of the sensorimotor mu-alpha rhythm for corticospinal excitability and with Prof. Jan Born to continue my investigations into the function of sleep-specific oscillations. In 2018, I started my own research group for Neurostimulation at the Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research (LIR) in Mainz (Germany), where we established concurrent TMS-fMRI and further advanced EEG-triggered TMS and the automation of neurostimulation experiments. In November 2020, I was appointed Associate Professor (W2) of Neurostimulation at the Neuroimaging Center (NIC) of the Johannes Gutenberg University Medical Center in Mainz, while keeping an associated research group at the LIR to continue studying the neurobiological correlates of emotional memory processing for resilience. At the NIC, we have recently started to establish transcranial ultrasonic stimulation (TUS) for non-invasive deep brain neuromodulation.

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Cameron McIntyre, Ph.D. 
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University

**Make Note of Special Time and Location**
Refreshments provided for in-person attendees

BIO
Cameron McIntyre is currently a professor of biomedical engineering and neurosurgery at Duke University. He started in the field of biomedical engineering as an undergraduate student at Case Western Reserve University. He became interested in neuroengineering and as an undergraduate started working at Warren Grill’s research lab. Dr McIntyre was working on electrical stimulation of the spinal cord and started building some computer models of how electric fields interact with neurons. He realized a substantial need to understand better how electric fields interact with brain tissue in a human context, and deep brain stimulation was getting going.

Speaker Webpage: http://lk.zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu/

Host: Hannah Choi

Speaker Webpage: http://lk.zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu/

Host: Hannah Choi

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Vivek Srinivasan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Ophthalmology
Associate Professor, Department of Radiology
New York University

*Lunch provided for in-person attendees

The Vivek Srinivasan lab develops new light-based technologies for in vivo imaging and sensing of the brain and eye. Never satisfied with just a proof-of-principle, they actively collaborate with clinicians and other scientists to optimize and apply these technologies to solve problems in biomedical research. They are funded by the National Institutes of Health, UC Davis College of Engineering, and Glaucoma Research Foundation.

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Cristopher Niell, Ph.D
Associate Professor, Department of Biology
University of Oregon

*Lunch provided for in-person attendees

ABSTRACT
Natural visual processing entails a complex interplay between sensory input, behavioral context, and on-going brain dynamics. Our lab seeks to understand how these processes give rise to goal-directed visual behaviors, using the mouse as a model system. As a complement to studying visual processing in trained tasks, we are now exploring the neural circuits mediating ethologically relevant behaviors that laboratory mice perform. In particular, our studies of prey capture have provided insight into behavioral strategies and neural circuits for detection of salient stimuli within a complex and dynamic sensory environment. We are also implementing novel experimental approaches to investigate neural coding of the visual scene as animals freely move through their environment and engage in natural behaviors. Finally, I will present a new research direction studying the completely different, yet largely unexplored, visual system of the octopus.
 
BIO
Cristopher Niell received his B.S. in physics at Stanford University, doing research in single-molecule biophysics with Dr. Steven Chu. He then remained at Stanford to obtain his Ph.D. with Dr. Stephen Smith, studying the development and function of the zebrafish visual system. He then moved to UCSF to perform post-doctoral study with Dr. Michael Stryker, where he initiated studies of visual processing and behavioral state in the mouse cortex. He established his lab at University of Oregon in 2011, where he is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology and Institute of Neuroscience. His lab uses a combination of neural recording and imaging methods, operant and ethological behaviors, and computational analysis to study the neural circuits that underlie visually guided behavior and perception.

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A. Bolu Ajiboye, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Case Western Reserve University

*Lunch provided for in-person attendees

ABSTRACT
Cortically controlled neuroprostheses have long been posited as the “holy grail” for intracortical brain-machine interfaces (BMIs). The efficacy of BMIs has advanced to the point where a small number of laboratories around the US now run human clinical trials with people with chronic paralysis. As part of the ReHAB Clinical Trial, my Laboratory for Intelligent Machine-Brain Systems (LIMBS) investigates using BMIs to control Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) systems for restoring reach-to-grasp movements to persons with chronic high cervical spinal cord injury. This lecture will discuss several of our clinical, technological, and scientific advances towards developing a bi-directional BMI controlled FES arm neuroprosthesis for restoring motor and somatosensory function. The highlight of this lecture will be the demonstration of a current ReHAB participant, an individual with chronic tetraplegia, eight years post-injury using a multi-nodal BMI with multi-contact FES nerve cuff electrodes to volitionally and independently perform functional tasks, such as self-feeding and shaking hands, and discerning somatosensory feedback through intracortical microstimulation (ICMS). This lecture will also discuss use of human BMI systems as a platform for interrogating fundamental questions of human sensorimotor control, including understanding underlying mechanisms of motor performance and learning, and internal representations of kinetic, kinematic, and somatosensory parameters. Finally, this lecture will discuss steps towards clinical translation of viable FES+BMI neuroprosthetic systems for potential at-home use.

BIO
A. Bolu Ajiboye, Ph.D. is the Elmer Lincoln Lindseth Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University. He also holds an appointment as a Biomedical Engineering Scientist at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center. He received his dual BS degree in Biomedical and Electrical Engineering, as well as a minor in Computer Science, from Duke University (Durham, NC) in 2000.  He then received his Masters (2003) and Doctoral (2008) degrees from Northwestern University (Evanston, IL). Dr. Ajiboye is the director the Laboratory for Intelligent Machine-Brain Systems (LIMBS), where his main research interest is in the development and control of bi-directional brain-machine interface (BMI) neuroprosthetic technologies for restoring motor and sensory function to individuals who have experienced severely debilitating injuries to the nervous system, such as spinal cord injury and stroke.  Currently, he is interested in understanding at a systems level the relationships between the firing patterns of multi-neuronal networks and the kinetic (muscle activity and force) and kinematic (limb position and velocity) outputs of these neural systems in the control of upper-limb movements, as well as encoding models of somatosensory percepts for sensory restoration. The end goal of his research is to develop BMI systems that allow for more natural interactions with one’s surrounding environment, and more natural control of assistive technologies, such as artificial limbs and functional electrical stimulation (FES) based systems. Additionally, his research focuses on understanding natural muscle coordination patterns involved in motor coordination, and how these patterns can be used in neuroprosthetic systems to restore lost or compromised function through FES.

Brian Lau, Ph.D.
Brain and Spine Institute
Sorbonne Universities

*Lunch provided for in-person attendees

RESEARCH

Brian Lau's research is aimed at understanding how neural activity within basal ganglia circuits enables us to learn and control our actions. He combines fundamental investigations in animal models with clinical investigations in patients undergoing deep brain stimulation surgery for treating movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. Lau trained with Walter J. Freeman and Yang Dan at the University of California, Berkeley, and obtained a PhD under the supervision of Paul Glimcher at New York University (2007). He was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University where I worked with C. Daniel Salzman. Afterwards, he moved to the Brain and Spine Institute (ICM) as a visiting scholar with Etienne Hirsch. In 2012 Lau created the team “Experimental Neurosurgery” under the auspices of the ATIP-Avenir program, and was recruited by the CNRS (2013).

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Randy Buckner, Ph.D.
Sosland Family Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
Harvard University

*Lunch provided for in-person attendees

ABSTRACT
Human association cortex is populated by a series of large-scale networks. In terms of organization, the multiple networks form an orderly progression that radiates outwards from sensory-motor networks to transmodal association networks that underlie advanced forms of human cognition. In-depth analysis within individuals reveals anatomical details including that functionally distinct networks are intertwined throughout multiple zones of association cortex, raising questions about how they evolved and how they differentiate during development. Interestingly, it was found quite recently that monkeys, including the genetically accessible marmoset, possess association networks that recapitulate many of the human features. These parallels provide an opportunity to connect experiments in animal models of large-scale circuits to work and clinical interventions in the human. What is further revealing is that the networks that populate the transmodal zones of association cortex, within the regions estimated to be preferentially expanded in hominid evolution, possess three distinct spatially juxtaposed networks in the human for (1) language, (2) making social inferences, and (3) remembering. All share a common organizational motif with the same general pattern of distributed connectivity but they occupy spatially adjacent regions of cortex and can be functionally dissociated from one another. A parsimonious idea is that the same general circuit motif, arising at least 50 million years ago in primates, has expanded and specialized into multiple similarly organized, differentially specialized distributed networks that populate the expanded zones of human association cortex in support of the human niche’s cognitive toolkit.

BIO
Randy Buckner received his BA in Psychology and his PhD in Neurosciences from Washington University in St. Louis. He is a member of the Center for Brain Science at Harvard University, and the Director of the Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Division and faculty of the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at the Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School.

RESEARCH
Randy Buckner’s laboratory explores the organization and function of large-scale human brain networks that contribute to high-level cognition. Using multiple behavioral, neuroimaging and computational approaches we characterize brain networks and how variation gives rise to differences in network organization and behavior, including dysfunction in neuropsychiatric illness. 

Farzaneh Najafi, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Tech

*Lunch provided for in-person attendees

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Abstract
Predictive coding is a theory of brain function that assumes the brain contains an internal model of the world, which constantly generates predictions about our environment, and updates the predictions if they deviate from the actual external inputs. Impaired predictive processing is suggested to underlie symptoms such as hallucinations and social disconnection in neurological disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. Treating these disorders requires understanding the neural mechanisms that generate and update prediction signals in the healthy brain. My long-term vision is to shed light on the circuits and computations that underlie predictive processing in the brain.

I will start my talk by presenting data from my previous research that demonstrate predictive signals in cortical and cerebellar circuits in behaving mice. Then I will describe the gap in our knowledge about how the cerebellum and cortex may interact to support predictive behavior. Finally, I will present the future research plans for my lab to investigate these unknown questions, shedding light on the cortico-cerebellar circuitries that underlie predictive processing.

Bio

Farzaneh studied Biotechnology (integrated BSc/MSc/PhD program) at the University of Tehran, Iran, and completed her master's project on stem cell research at Royan Institute at Hossein Baharvand's lab. She came to the US in 2007 for her Ph.D. in systems neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania and studied cerebellar mechanisms underlying motor adaptation in Javier Medina's lab and collaborated with Sam Wang's lab at Princeton University.

She joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2014 as a postdoc to study parietal cortex circuits underlying cognitive behavior in Anne Churchland's lab and joined the Allen institute for Brain Science to investigate in 2019 the neural circuits of visually guided behavior using a team science approach.

Her appointment as assistant professor at Georgia Tech will begin in January 2023 to investigate the circuits and computations that underlie predictive processing in the brain.

Research

The Najafi Lab's field of research is known as predictive processing. Predictive processing is a theory of brain function that assumes the brain contains an internal model of the world, which constantly generates and updates predictions about the world.

Impaired predictive processing is thought to underlie hallucinations and social disconnection in neurological disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. It can also lead to motor disorders, such as impaired movement adaptation following perturbations.

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Christos Padaimitriou, Ph.D.
Donovan Family Professor of Computer Science
Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Columbia University

*Lunch provided for in-person attendees
Bio

Christos Papadimitriou authored the widely used textbook Computational Complexity, as well as four others, and has written three novels, including the best-selling Logicomix and his latest, Independence. He considers himself fundamentally a teacher, having taught at UC Berkeley for the past 20 years, and before that at Harvard, MIT, the National Technical University of Athens, Stanford, and UC San Diego.

Papadimitriou has been awarded the Knuth Prize, IEEE’s John von Neumann Medal, the EATCS Award, the IEEE Computer Society Charles Babbage Award, and the Gödel Prize. He is a fellow of the Association for Computer Machinery and the National Academy of Engineering, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

He received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Athens Polytechnic in 1972. He has a MS in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science from Princeton, received in 1974 and 1976, respectively.

Research

Christos Papadimitriou is best known for his work in computational complexity, helping to expand its methodology and reach. He has also explored other fields through what he calls the algorithmic lens, having contributed to biology and the theory of evolution, economics, and game theory (where he helped found the field of algorithmic game theory), artificial intelligence, robotics, networks and the Internet, and more recently the study of the brain. 

"Developmental Mechanisms Shaping Direction Selective Circuits in the Retina" 

Marla Feller, Ph.D.
Professor of Neurobiology
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology
University of California, Berkeley

*Lunch provided for in-person attendees

Bio
Marla Feller is the Paul Licht Distinguished Professor in Biological Sciences and Member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. She studies the mechanisms that underpin the assembly of neural circuits during development. Feller is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Research done in the Feller lab uses a combination of physiology and advanced imaging techniques to study the role of activity in the development of functional neural circuits in the retina.

Research Interests
The Feller lab is interested in the mechanisms that guide the assembly of neural circuits during development. We use the retinas as a model system, where we use  two-photon imaging, electrophysiology and a variety of anatomical approaches to address two major questions.  First, we study how immature retinal circuits generate retinal waves -- a term used to describe highly patterned spontaneous activity in the immature retina -- and what role this activity plays in the development of the retina and the retina's connections to the central visual system. Recently we have focused on a class of neurons called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells as well as the role of waves in shaping glial cell morphology.  In addition, we study the development and organization of the circuits that mediate direction selectivity in the retina.  

*Lunch provided for in-person attendees

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ABSTRACT
Assembly of inhibitory and excitatory neurons into networks represents a critical period in the development of the cerebral cortex during which early principles of circuit formation and function are established. This elaborate process, which involves GABAerrgic interneurons migrating long distances to integrate with glutamatergic neurons, is, when perturbed, often associated with various neuropsychiatric disorders. However, the lack of access to functional tissue precludes mechanistic insights into how early cortical circuits are wired in humans and miswired in disease. I will describe my work towards developing “forebrain assembloids”, a modular, hiPSC-based brain organoid platform that allows for the previously inaccessible aspects of human cortical assembly, such as human cortical migration and network integration, to be studied in vitro. Using hiPSCs derived from patients with a monogenic form of autism, I will demonstrate how the forebrain assembloid system can be used to uncover novel disease phenotypes at the cellular, molecular and network levels and point to novel therapeutic avenues.

BIO
Fikri was born in Nicosia, Cyprus. As a Fulbright Scholar, he received his BS in Biology with Honors from University of Kansas in 2008 and his Ph.D. in Genetics from Stony Brook University in 2014 on neuroglial interactions in stress-related disorders. He completed his postdoctoral training at Stanford University in 2021 in the laboratory of Sergiu Pasca, where he developed the forebrain assembloid platform and applied it to understand how neurodevelopmental disorders emerge during human cortical development. Fikri started his own group in the Department of Human Genetics at Emory University early this year, where he combines stem cell-based models with a variety of cellular and molecular tools to better understand the guiding principles of how the human brain is assembled in health and disease.

Nabil Imam, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
School of Computational Science and Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology

*Lunch provided for in-person attendees

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In what Georgia Tech Arts and Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre (TMBT) have dubbed the Neuroethics Grand Challenge, the two companies along with acclaimed choreographer Troy Schumacher and internationally revered new media artist Sergio Mora-Diaz explore neuroscience and the ethics of intervention with AI and other technologies.

Our brain is the path to human experience. Interacting with the adaptive brain has the potential to challenge our self-understanding, arguably more than any other scientific discipline. The collaborative partnership between Georgia Tech, Emory University, and TMBT brings you to the intersection of neuroscience, technology, and ethics in a new work animated by the dancers’ exquisite artistry.

The artists’ collaborative partnership extends to a team of researchers led by Christopher Rozell, professor in the School of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Karen Rommelfanger, president and founder of the Institute of Neuroethics. Other faculty who engaged with the artists by discussing their research include: Chethan Pandarinath, assistant professor, Annabelle Singer, assistant professor, Garrett Stanley professor, and Lena Ting, professor, in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University; and Doby Rahnev, associate professor in the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech.

Commissioned in part with support from the Charles Loridans Foundation.

Tickets $10 general and just $5 for Georgia Tech students!

Visit the Georgia Tech Arts website to get yours today!

In what Georgia Tech Arts and Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre (TMBT) have dubbed the Neuroethics Grand Challenge, the two companies along with acclaimed choreographer Troy Schumacher and internationally revered new media artist Sergio Mora-Diaz explore neuroscience and the ethics of intervention with AI and other technologies.

Our brain is the path to human experience. Interacting with the adaptive brain has the potential to challenge our self-understanding, arguably more than any other scientific discipline. The collaborative partnership between Georgia Tech, Emory University, and TMBT brings you to the intersection of neuroscience, technology, and ethics in a new work animated by the dancers’ exquisite artistry.

The artists’ collaborative partnership extends to a team of researchers led by Christopher Rozell, professor in the School of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Karen Rommelfanger, president and founder of the Institute of Neuroethics. Other faculty who engaged with the artists by discussing their research include: Chethan Pandarinath, assistant professor, Annabelle Singer, assistant professor, Garrett Stanley professor, and Lena Ting, professor, in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University; and Doby Rahnev, associate professor in the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech.

Commissioned in part with support from the Charles Loridans Foundation.

Tickets $10 general, and just $5 for Georgia Tech students!

Visit the Georgia Tech Arts website to get yours today!

In what Georgia Tech Arts and Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre (TMBT) have dubbed the Neuroethics Grand Challenge, the two companies along with acclaimed choreographer Troy Schumacher and internationally revered new media artist Sergio Mora-Diaz explore neuroscience and the ethics of intervention with AI and other technologies.

Our brain is the path to human experience. Interacting with the adaptive brain has the potential to challenge our self-understanding, arguably more than any other scientific discipline. The collaborative partnership between Georgia Tech, Emory University, and TMBT brings you to the intersection of neuroscience, technology, and ethics in a new work animated by the dancers’ exquisite artistry.

The artists’ collaborative partnership extends to a team of researchers led by Christopher Rozell, professor in the School of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Karen Rommelfanger, president and founder of the Institute of Neuroethics. Other faculty who engaged with the artists by discussing their research include: Chethan Pandarinath, assistant professor, Annabelle Singer, assistant professor, Garrett Stanley professor, and Lena Ting, professor, in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University; and Doby Rahnev, associate professor in the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech.

Commissioned in part with support from the Charles Loridans Foundation.

Tickets $10 general and just $5 for Georgia Tech students!

Visit the Georgia Tech Arts website to get yours today!

BIO
Maria Bedny, Ph.D. earned her B.A. in Cognitive Science at John Hopkins University and both her M.A. and Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She completed post doctoral fellowships at MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation Harvard Medical School (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center).

RESEARCH INTERESTS  
How do nature and nurture contribute to the human mind and brain? Our lab investigates this age-old question using the methods of cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology. A key approach in the lab compares the minds and brains of people with different developmental experiences: sighted, congenitally blind and late-blind individuals. One direction of research examines how people who are born blind think about “visual” concepts, such as blue glow and stare. In what way are the cognitive and neural representations of these categories different and similar across sighted and blind people? Another line of work examines the function of “visual” cortices in blind individuals. What functions do visual cortices acquire in blindness and how similar are these new functions to the typical visual functions of occipital cortices? Is plasticity during childhood different than plasticity in adulthood and if so in what way?  

Jeffery Markowitz, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Georgia Tech and Emory University 

*Lunch provided for in-person attendees

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BIO
Jeffery Markowitz, Ph.D., received his Ph.D. at Boston University and his bachelor’s at Johns Hopkins University. He joined the faculty at the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering in March 2022.  His lab focuses on understanding how brain gives rise to action and his team seeks to understand this fundamental process in the lab using the mouse as a model organism.

Their primary approach is to perform 3D motion capture of a mouse as it freely explores a large arena using a variety of sensors – this is used to build a dense point cloud of the animal. Then, they use fully unsupervised probabilistic time-series models to segment the motion capture data into discrete behaviors, for instance running, rearing, grooming, or turning. At the same time, they read and write neural activity primarily using electrophysiology, functional imaging, and optogenetics.

John Tuthill, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Physiology and Biophysics
University of Washington

*Lunch provided for in-person attendees

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BIO
John Tuthill, Ph.D., received his B.A. in Biology and Anthropology from Swarthmore College in 2006. He then worked as a cabinetmaker in Montana and crab electrophysiologist in Argentina before completing a PhD in Michael Reiser’s lab at HHMI/Janelia in 2012. For his doctoral work, John studied the algorithmic implementation of visual motion detection in the miniature brain of the fruit fly, Drosophila. As a post-doc in Rachel Wilson’s lab at Harvard, he pioneered the study of touch processing in sensorimotor neural circuits of the fly. John is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington. His lab combines genetic tools with electrophysiology and optical imaging to understand how the fly brain senses the body and controls behavior. In 2017, John was named a Klingenstein-Simons Fellow, Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and Searle Scholar. 

College of Science News - Celikel Appointed School of Psychology Chair

BIO
Tansu Celikel received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience at La Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA) in Italy. After conducting postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Diego and the Max-Planck Institute for Medical Research, he set up his first laboratory at the University of Southern California in 2008. Four years later, Celikel moved to the Netherlands to establish the Department of Neurophysiology at the Radboud University, where he has since served as professor and chair. Celikel is also the director of the Donders Institute, a preeminent interdisciplinary institute in Europe devoted to the advancement of brain, cognitive, and behavioral sciences to improve health, education, and technology.

Anumantha Kanthasamy’s research program has been at the forefront in unraveling the cell signaling mechanisms underlying key pathophysiological processes of PD, including mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, dopaminergic therapy, aSyn protein aggregation, gut microbiota dysbiosis, exosome trafficking, neuroinflammation, and apoptosis. Furthermore he and his team recently adopted a highly sensitive RT-QuIC assay to successfully detect ultralow levels of pathologic αSyn aggregates from serum, plasma, CSF and submandibular and skin samples from PD and related Parkinsonian disorders. Kanthasamy’s lab translational research efforts also involve testing the efficacy of several small-molecule, peptide, and probiotic therapeutics against select targets in various experimental models of PD such as MPTP, 6-OHDA, MitoPark, and αSyn rodent models to advance them for further preclinical and clinical evaluations. The lab’s translational research efforts have resulted in several patent applications, including utility patent application 16/287,437, “L-Dopa Microbiome Therapy.” This knowledge is key to discovering new biomarkers and will advance the development of novel translational approaches for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases like PD. Kanthasamy’s program has been continuously supported by multiple NIH grants from NIEHS and NINDS for over 20 years, and he is currently funded by NIEHS, NINDS, NIBIB, MJFF, and DoD grants. He has trained over 30 Ph.D. students and his current research program employs over 25 researchers, largely comprising graduate students.

Overall his drive research projects in four major areas:

• Novel apoptotic and compensatory signaling activated during neurotoxic insult in the dopaminergic neurodegenerative process;
• Protein misfolding and neuroinflammatory mechanisms in neurotoxicity;
• Epigenetic reprogramming in neurotoxic stress; and
• Translational biomarker and drug discovery in neurotoxicity and neurodegeneration.

We have recently set up a paradigm where mice learn to associate sensory information (two different odors) to motor outputs (lick vs no-lick) under head-fixation. We combined this with two-photon calcium imaging, which can monitor the activity of a microcircuit of many tens of neurons simultaneously from a small area of the brain. Imaging the motor cortex during the learning of this task revealed neurons with diverse task-related response types. Intriguingly, different response types were spatially intermingled; even immediately adjacent neurons often had very different response types. As the mouse learned the task under the microscope, the activity coupling of neurons with similar response types specifically increased, even though they are intermingled with neurons with dissimilar response types. This suggests that intermingled subnetworks of functionally-related neurons form in a learning-related way, an observation that became possible with our cutting-edge technique combining imaging and behavior.

We are working to extend this study. How plastic are neuronal microcircuits during other forms of learning? How plastic are they in other parts of the brain? What are the cellular and molecular mechanisms of the microcircuit plasticity? Are the observed activity and plasticity required for learning? How does the activity of identified individual neurons change over days to weeks? We are asking these questions, combining a variety of techniques including in vivo two-photon imaging, optogenetics, electrophysiology, genetics and behavior.

BIO
Komiyama was a Postdoc at Janelia Farm, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, received his Ph.D. in Neurosciences at Stanford University (2006) and his BA in Biochemistry at University of Tokyo (2001). His Honors include: Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award, Japan-Stanford Association Graduate Fellowship, Stanford Graduate Fellowship, Pew Scholars Program, Packard Fellowship and Sloan Research Fellowship. Komiyama is a NYSCF-Robertson Investigator.

"Dissection of Neural Circuit Function and Degeneration from a Subcellular Perspective"
 

How do neurons perform the set of signaling functions necessary for proper circuit function?We aim to uncover cellular and molecular mechanisms that shape excitability among different mammalian neurons. We approach these questions in intact brain circuits, using intersectional approaches combining optogenetics, in vivo and ex vivo electrophysiology, 2P imaging, AAV vectors, and transgenic models. Perhaps the most critical neuronal signaling features are action potential firing and synaptic transmission. Neurons regulate these features by spatially segregating different ion channels in the soma, dendrites, and axon. We are now beginning to understand the significance of these cellular processes in terms of circuit function and disease. We are interested in understanding how different cell classes, (e.g., inhibitory neurons) utilize these excitable mechanisms to their advantage in the circuit. Knowledge gained from these studies will fuel the design of robust, cell-type-specific therapeutic approaches against neurological disorders.

Yang Dan, Ph.D.
Paul Licht Distinguished Professor
Molecular and Cell Biology
University of California, Berkeley

Sleep is a fundamental biological process, and its disruption has profound impacts on human health. Using a variety of techniques including optogenetics, electrophysiology, imaging, and gene expression profiling, we identify key neurons in the sleep control circuits and map their synaptic connections. Sleep appears to be controlled by a highly distributed network spanning the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain, where REM and non-REM sleep neurons are part of the central somatic and autonomic motor circuits. The intimate association between the sleep and autonomic/somatic motor control circuits suggests that a primary function of sleep is to promote biological processes incompatible with movement.

“A Functional Cortical Network for Sensorimotor Sequence Generation”

I will discuss my laboratory’s recent work on the sensorimotor control of complex tongue movements. The brain generates complex sequences of movements that can be flexibly reconfigured in real-time based on sensory feedback, but how this occurs is not fully understood. We developed a novel ‘sequence licking’ task in which mice directed their tongue to a target that moved through a series of locations. Mice could rapidly reconfigure the sequence online based on tactile feedback. Closed-loop optogenetics and electrophysiology revealed that tongue/jaw regions of somatosensory (S1TJ) and motor (M1TJ) cortex encoded and controlled tongue kinematics at the level of individual licks. Tongue premotor (anterolateral motor, ALM) cortex encoded intended tongue angle in a smooth manner that spanned individual licks and even whole sequences, and progress toward the reward that marked successful sequence execution. ALM activity regulated sequence initiation, but multiple cortical areas collectively controlled termination of licking. Our results define a functional cortical network for hierarchical control of sensory- and reward-guided orofacial sequence generation.
 

Alberto Stolfi, Ph.D. 
Assistant Professor
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Tech

Animal behavior depends both on the intrinsic properties of individual neurons and how these neurons connect to and modulate one another. A major focus of modern neuroscience is to dissect behavior at the level of individual genes, neurons, and specific synaptic connections, but we are far from fully understanding how the composition and connectivity of even the smallest nervous systems can determine the wide range of behaviors observed in a free-living animal. Our lab is investigating the development of the simple larval nervous systems of tunicates like Ciona, marine invertebrates closely related to vertebrates. Although tunicates are chordates like us, Ciona larvae possess the smallest nervous system ever described at only 231 total neurons (177 central nervous system neurons and 54 peripheral sensory cells), comprising only the second complete “connectome” ever mapped. Using experimental tools such as CRISPR/Cas9-mediated mutagenesis and single-cell RNAseq, we have uncovered neurodevelopmental processes that shape this minimal nervous system, some of which are conserved even in mammals. We are also interested in studying an even more extreme example of the “minimization” of the tunicate nervous system, focusing on certain species that bypass the swimming larval phase and are therefore undergoing evolutionary loss of the larval nervous system altogether.

Michael H. Dickinson, Ph.D.
Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem Professor of Bioengineering and Aeronautics
California Institute of Technology

Over 400 million years ago, a group of tiny six-legged creatures evolved the ability to fly—an event that fundamentally transformed our planet. Equipped with the ability to fly, insects underwent an extraordinary radiation and have dominated every terrestrial ecosystem ever since. In order to employ fly effectively, these ancient insects must have possessed the rudimentary ability to take off, fly stably, disperse, forage, and land — a core set of behavioral modules that constitute a ‘Devonian Toolkit’. The fact that the basic architecture of the nervous system is remarkably uniform across species, further suggests that many behaviors of modern insects are deeply rooted in a common evolutionary history. My lab is attempting to reconstruct the behavior and ecology of ancestral insects through investigations of the common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Most experiments on fly behaviors have been confined to small laboratory chambers, yet the natural history of these animals involves dispersal that takes place on a much larger spatial scale. New release-and-recapture experiments in the Mojave Desert confirm that flies can navigate over 10 kilometers of open landscape in just a few hours. Such excursions are only possible because flies can actively maintain a constant heading. In this talk, I will discuss a hierarchy of neural mechanisms that enable flies to maintain a stable course in the face of external and internal perturbations. Collectively, this new research provides insight into ancient sensory-motor modules that have helped make insects the most successful group of animals in the history of life.

Adam Kohn, Ph.D.
Professor, Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience
Professor, Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences
Professor, Department of Systems & Computational Biology
Isidor Tachna Professor in Ophthalmology
Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Most brain functions involve neuronal population activity that is distributed across multiple areas. The routing of signals through this distributed network is flexible, changing from moment-to-moment to meet task demands. To determine how flexible cortical communication could be instantiated, we recorded spiking activity of neuronal populations across several stages of the macaque cortical visual stream.  Using dimensionality reduction methods, we find that inter-areal interactions occur through a communication subspace: downstream fluctuations are related to a small subset of source population activity patterns. Subspaces for feedforward and feedback interactions appear distinct. We propose that the communication subspace may be a general, population-level mechanism by which activity can be selectively and flexibly routed across brain areas.

Michael Stryker, Ph.D.
Professor
School of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco

Michael Stryker's laboratory studies the development and plasticity of the central visual system. Most of his laboratory's effort focuses on the role of neural activity in the primary visual cortex of the mouse, where they have identified a circuit that dramatically enhances activity-dependent plasticity in adult animals. They use 2-photon microscopy and electrophysiology to study genetically identified types of neurons in alert animals.

His laboratory's major interest is the in the mechanisms responsible for the development and plasticity of precise connections within the central nervous system, and particularly in the role of neural activity in this process. Most of the work performed is on the visual cortex of the mouse. In normal development, neural connections to and within the visual cortex are refined to high precision through the action of activity-dependent mechanisms of neural plasticity in combination with specific molecular signals. In experiments, the lab induces activity-dependent plasticity experimentally through manipulations of genetics or experience or by pharmacological or neurophysiological intervention in order to discover what cellular mechanisms and what changes in cortical circuitry are responsible for rapid, long lasting changes in neuronal responses. These changes are analyzed using microelectrode recordings, novel techniques for measurement of optical and metabolic signals related to neural activity, including 2-photon microscopy and intrinsic signal imaging, and anatomical and neurochemical tracing of connections.

Tatyana Sharpee, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Biological Studies
Salk Institute

Using the sense of smell as an example, I will describe both theoretical reasons and experimental evidence that natural stimuli and human perception can be mapped onto a low dimensional curved surface. This surface turns out to have a negative curvature, corresponding to a hyperbolic metric. Although this map was derived purely from the statistics of co-occurrence between mono-molecular odorants in the natural environment it revealed topography in the organization of human perception of smell. I will conclude with arguments for why hyperbolic metric should be generally applicable elsewhere in the nervous system.

Nigel P. Pedersen, M.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Neurology
Emory University

While human research has emphasized the large-scale network disruptions in the epilepsies and their co-morbidities, basic science has typically focused on local networks. In rodents, more general large-scale network dynamics are essentially unstudied at fast time scales and high spatial precision. I will describe our human work examining forebrain connectivity and animal studies that examine large scale network manipulations and the development of techniques to record from larger anatomically connected networks. Present animal model work focuses on manipulations of one of the most important large-scale networks - the major state control system for sleep-wake and vigilance. While these circuits have been elucidated in increasing detail over the last decade and are the major controller of brain rhythms and excitability, they are surprisingly little explored in epilepsy. I will discuss the limitations of present technologies for studying large-scale brain networks in rodents and a solution that we are developing.

“Neural Decoding and Control of Multiscale Brain Networks: From Motor to Mood”

In this talk, I first discuss our recent work on modeling, decoding, and controlling multisite human brain activity underlying mood states. I present a multiscale dynamical modeling framework that allows us, for the first time, to decode mood variations and identify brain sites that are most predictive of mood. I then develop a system identification approach that can predict large-scale brain network dynamics (output) in response to electrical stimulation (input) to enable closed-loop control of brain activity. Finally, I demonstrate that our modeling framework can uncover multiscale neural dynamics from hybrid spike-field activity in monkeys performing unconstrained movements and can further combine information from multiple scales of activity and model their different time-scales and statistical profiles. These models, decoders, and controllers could facilitate future closed-loop therapies for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders and help probe neural circuits.

“Perturbation-imaging Approaches to Study Functional Contributions of Cortical Activity to Human Movement”

The ability to learn and produce skilled movements is required for humans to successfully engage with each other and their environment. A principal role of the brain is to guide current, and plan future, movements based on past actions and potential rewards. In this talk, I will describe ongoing work in our lab employing multiple approaches to investigate the functional contributions of brain activity to normal and abnormal human movement. I will discuss how transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a form of non-invasive brain stimulation, can be used both characterize and modulate cortical activity and connectivity during movement. I will also describe our recent findings showing abnormal TMS-evoked cortical reactivity post-stroke that is related to persistent paretic arm impairment. Lastly, I will discuss preliminary work applying alternative perturbation paradigms to study brain-behavior relationships in health and disease.

“Using Human Brain Organoids to Unveil Neuron-Glial Interactions During Development”

Glia are the most abundant cell types in the mammalian nervous system. They are integral to normal brain physiology, yet we still understand very little about what functions they perform, how they develop, and how they are involved in disease. We understand even less about these cells in humans because of the lack of direct access to intact, functioning human brain tissue. Our lab is using pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived non-invasively from skin samples to generate brain cells in the lab. Because the brain is a 3D structure and studying cells growing on a plate does not recapitulate its complexity, we are using human iPSCs to generate functional 3D structures that are patterned to mirror specific regions of the human brain. We can culture these 'brains-in-a-dish' for long periods of time to ask how normal brain development is occurring in a human system. Additionally, this method allows us to ask questions about how neurons and glia interact with each other in both healthy and diseased contexts, and to manipulate specific variables of brain development in an otherwise complex developmental system.

“Neural Mechanisms of Movement Precision”

How the brain makes movements fast, smooth and accurate has remained a mystery. In this talk I will discuss our studies identifying predictive, adaptively scaled activity in a cerebellar output structure that causally controls limb velocity to enhance movement precision. The data have implications into the fundamental algorithms of the cerebellum and suggest loci for interventions in motor disorders.

“Functional Imaging of the Human Brain: A Window into the Architecture of the Mind”

The last 20 years of brain imaging research has revealed the functional organization of the human brain in glorious detail, including dozens of cortical regions each of which is specifically engaged in a particular mental task, like recognizing faces, perceiving speech sounds, and understanding the meaning of a sentence. Each of these regions is present, in approximately the same location, in every normal person. This initial rough sketch of the functional organization of the brain counts as real progress, giving us a kind of diagram of the major components of the human mind. But at the same time, it is just the barest beginning. Really what our new map of the human brain offers is a vast landscape of new questions. In this talk I will first broadly survey some of the most widely replicated functionally distinctive cortical regions, and then describe ongoing work into three such questions. First, in light of widespread findings that functionally specific cortical regions contain information about “nonpreferred” stimuli, do some patches of cortex really play a highly specific causal role in processing just one class of stimuli? Second, how does all this complex structure, that is so similar across subjects, arise in development? I will discuss the developmental origins of cortical specificity, including a new finding of what appears to be a fusiform face area in the ventral visual pathway of congenitally blind people. Third, why do we have the particular functionally specific cortical regions we do, and apparently not others, and why, from a computational point of view, is functional specificity a good design feature for brains in the first place?
 

James L. McClelland, Ph.D.
Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences
Director, Center for Mind, Brain and Computation
Department of Psychology
Stanford University, Stanford, CA

According to complementary learning systems theory, integrating new memories into a multi-layer neural network without interfering with what is already known depends on interleaving presentation of the new memories with ongoing presentations of items previously learned. This putative dependence is both costly for machine learning and biologically implausible for real brains which are unlikely to have sufficient time for such massive interleaving, even during sleep. We use deep linear neural networks in hierarchically structured environments previously analyzed by Saxe, McClelland, and Ganguli () to gain new insights into how integration of new knowledge might be made more efficient. For this type of environment, its content can be described by the singular value decomposition (SVD) of the environment's input-output covariance matrix, in which each successive dimension corresponds to categorical split in the hierarchical environment. Prior work showed that deep linear networks are sufficient to learn the content of the environment, and they do so in a stage-line way, with each dimension strength rising from near-zero to its maximum strength after a delay inversely proportional to the strength of the dimension, as previously demonstrated by Saxe et al capturing patterns previously observed in deeper non-linear neural networks by Rogers and McClelland (2004). Several observations are then accessible when we consider learning a new item previously not encountered in the micro-environment. (1) The item can be examined in terms of its projection onto the existing structure, and the degree to which it adds a new categorical split. (2) To the extent the item projects onto existing structure, including it in the training corpus leads to the rapid adjustment of the representation of the categories involved, and effectively no adjustment occurs to categories onto which the new item does not project at all. (3) Learning a new split, however, is slow, and its learning dynamics show the same delayed rise to maximum that depends on the dimension's strength. These observations then motivate the development of ideas about how the new information might be acquired efficiently, combining interleaved learning with other strategies.

This presentation can be seen via BlueJeans: https://bluejeans.com/824485104/

Carlos Brody, Ph.D.
Wilbur H. Gantz III '59 Professor in Neuroscience
Department of Molecular Biology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute
Princeton University

I will describe studies of the neural bases of cognitive processes. Rodents, mostly rats, are trained to perform behaviors that lend themselves to quantitative modeling that can help identify and assess specific cognitive processes, such as decision-making, short-term memory, planning, and executive control. With these well-quantified behaviors in hand, we then use electrophysiological recordings, optogenetic perturbations, and computational modeling. We aim to understand the neural architecture underlying cognition, across multiple levels, from local neural circuits, to interactions between brain regions, to overall behavior.

John P. Cunningham, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Statistics
Columbia University

One central challenge in neuroscience is to understand how neural populations represent and produce the remarkable computational abilities of our brains. Indeed, neuroscientists increasingly form scientific hypotheses that can only be studied at the level of the neural population, and exciting new large-scale datasets have followed. Capitalizing on this trend, however, requires two major efforts from applied statistical and machine learning researchers: (i) methods for finding latent structure in this data, and (ii) methods for statistically validating that structure. First, I will discuss our machine learning research that combines latent variable modeling, deep learning, dynamical systems, and dimensionality reduction, and I will discuss how we have applied those models to advance understanding of the computational structure in various neural systems, including in particular the primate and rodent motor cortices. Second, I will detail a problem of growing importance throughout unsupervised learning: how to understand when these analysis techniques artificially create structure, rather than that structure being a true feature of the data. I will review our recent work in this space, which uses deep neural network architectures in the flavor of implicit generative models, and describe our current application of these methods to a number of active debates in the neuroscience community about the triviality of certain results.  

John Serences, Ph.D. 
Professor
Department of Psychology
University of California, San Diego
 

Navigating through complex environments requires keeping relevant information in mind, or in working memory, while simultaneously processing new sensory inputs. For example, when frantically looking for your car keys in the morning, you need to hold in mind an image of what your keys look like while you scan each object in your living room for a match. Feature selective responses in early visual cortex are thought to play a role in maintaining information in working memory. However, these areas also must process new sensory inputs as you search the visual scene, and processing new inputs may wipe out information that you are trying to remember. I will discuss a recent set of studies that demonstrate region-wide multiplexing abilities in early visual areas, with population-level response patterns in visual cortex simultaneously representing the contents of working memory concurrently with new sensory inputs. 

This presentation can be seen via BlueJeans

Gina Turrigiano, Ph.D.
Levitan Professor and Chair
Department of Biology
Brandeis University 
 

Neocortical networks must generate and maintain stable activity patterns despite perturbations induced by learning and experience- dependent plasticity, and this stability must be maintained across distinct behavioral states with very different sensory drive and modulatory tone. There is abundant theoretical and experimental evidence that network stability is achieved through homeostatic plasticity mechanisms that adjust synaptic and neuronal properties to stabilize some measure of average activity, and this process has been extensively studied in primary visual cortex (V1), where chronic visual deprivation induces an initial drop in activity and ensemble average firing rates (FRs), but over time activity is restored to baseline despite continued deprivation. Here I discuss recent work from the lab in which we follow bidirectional FR homeostasis in individual V1 neurons in freely behaving animals, as they cycle between natural periods of sleep and wake. We find that - when FRs are perturbed by visual deprivation or eye re-opening - over time they return precisely to a cell-autonomous set-point. Intriguingly, this firing rate homeostasis is gated by sleep/wake states in a manner that depends on the direction of homeostatic regulation: upward firing rate homeostasis occurs selectively during periods of active wake, while downward firing rate homeostasis occurs selectively during periods of sleep. These data indicate that neocortical plasticity is regulated in a complex manner by vigilance state, and raise the possibility that temporal segregation of distinct plasticity mechanisms is important for proper circuit refinement.

This presentation can be seen via BlueJeans

Mark Goldman, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior
University of California, Davis

A major goal in neuroscience is to determine the neural circuit dynamics and plasticity underlying behavior. In the first half of the talk, I will discuss our efforts to dissect the cellular and circuit mechanisms underlying a neural integrator circuit that accumulates and stores information in a short-term memory buffer. Using a simple computational modeling framework that enables the direct incorporation of data on cellular properties, neural recordings, perturbations of activity, and anatomical constraints, we show what features of the network connectivity can, and cannot, be directly inferred from the data. In the second half of the talk, I will discuss our work seeking to determine the sites of plasticity underlying the tuning of a simple reflexive eye movement behavior that has been at the center of a decades-old debate in the field of motor learning. Despite the seeming simplicity of this reflexive behavior, we show that inferring even the sites and signs (potentiation vs. depression) of plasticity can be highly challenging due to the presence of feedback loops in the neural circuitry and through the environment. In both halves of the talk, challenges and approaches for disambiguating different possible models underlying neural and behavioral data will be highlighted.

Nelson Spruston, Ph.D.
Senior Director, Scientific Programs; Laboratory Head
Janelia Research Campus
Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Nelson Spruston studies the hippocampus, with an emphasis on uncovering the diversity and complexity of cells and synapses that allow this brain structure to contribute to memory-guided behavior, such as spatial navigation and emotional responses. Spruston and his team use a combination of approaches – including a variety of imaging methods, next-generation RNA sequencing, in vitro and in vivo electrophysiology, and behavior – to study the diversity of cell types in the mouse hippocampus. Spruston’s research has implications for understanding how memories are stored and recalled, as well as diseases that affect these processes.

This presentation can be seen via BlueJeans

Elizabeth Hillman, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Columbia University 

There is a crucial biological system that reaches every crevice of the brain, and yet goes unstudied by most neuroscientists. It is the vascular system, the network of vessels that carries oxygen-rich blood to hardworking nerve cells, called neurons. Elizabeth Hillman, PhD, a principal investigator at Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, studies neurovascular coupling — or how neural activity in the brain drives changes in brain blood flow. Despite its importance, little is known about this critical aspect of brain function.

This presentation can be seen via BlueJeans

Danielle Bassett, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Bioengineering
University of Pennsylvania

Bassett's group studies biological, physical, and social systems by using and developing tools from network science and complex systems theory. Our broad goal is to isolate problems at the intersection of basic science, engineering, and clinical medicine that can be tackled using systems-level approaches. Recent examples include predicting the extent of learning from human brain networks, resolving the evolution of the neuronal synapse via genetic interaction networks, determining bulk material properties from mesoscale force networks, and isolating individual drivers of collective social behavior during evacuations. In these contexts, we seek to develop new mathematical methods for the principled characterization of temporally dynamic, spatially embedded, and multiscale networked systems, with the goal of predicting system behavior and designing perturbations to affect a specific outcome. A current focal interest of the group lies in network neuroscience. We develop analytic tools to probe the hard-wired pathways and transient communication patterns inside of the brain in an effort to identify organizational principles, to develop novel diagnostics of disease, and to design personalized therapeutics for rehabilitation and treatment of brain injury, neurological disease, and psychiatric disorders.

Brent Doiron, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Mathematics
University of Pittsburgh

My general research program seeks to identify how single neurons and networks of neurons code information about relevant inputs. Using a combination of nonlinear systems theory, stochastic differential equations, and information theory I study this problem in the context of somatosensory, auditory, and electrosensory systems. The main goal is to link brain dynamics responsible for coding with putative coding schemes that may be general across many sensory systems. Of particular interest is how correlations and synchrony across a population of thalamic and cortical neurons influences the information throughput of sensory processing.

Jordan Hamm, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Neuroscience Institute
Georgia State University

The Hamm lab conducts basic research on cortical microcircuitry with paradigms and approaches designed to provide deeper insight into neuropsychiatric disease. Sensory processing abnormalities in schizophrenia (SZ) undermine how affected individuals perceive and relate to a changing environment. These aberrations reflect fundamental neural pathophysiology in SZ, impacting stable information processing and giving rise to downstream deficits in cognitive and social functioning. Dr. Hamm’s research focuses on the interaction between the cellular, circuit-level, and networks of function in the cortex i) as it relates to sensory processing dysfunction specifically, and ii) as it can provide clues toward a unifying pathophysiology in this very heterogeneous disease. His laboratory will employ techniques such as 2P-Ca++, dense array local field potential recordings (LFP/CSD), and opto/chemicogenetics in awake, behaving mice, utilizing both wild-type mice and mouse models of SZ relevant disease processes. Critically, sensory cortical structure and function is relatively well-conserved across mammals, and is highly accessible with classic psychophysical and neuroscience approaches. The Hamm lab takes advantage of this fact, employing paradigms which can be employed with human patients in clinical settings and rodent models in the lab, whereby established disease “biomarkers” (e.g. EEG measures) can be linked with specific neurobiology and therapeutics.

Vivek Jayaraman, Ph.D.
Senior Group Leader & Head of Mechanistic Cognitive Neuroscience
Janelia Research Campus
Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Our goal is to establish causal links between the dynamics of neural circuits and the behavioral decisions that an animal continuously makes as it navigates a multi-sensory world. Our focus is on computations in the central complex, a middle-of-the-insect-brain region that is thought to be important for sensory-guided decision making, navigation and motor control.

We believe that our choice of studying the function of a higher brain region involved in sensorimotor processing requires us to study neural activity in a behaving organism. Furthermore, validating any potential answers requires manipulating neural circuits in precise and well-controlled ways. This leads us to our experimental system, the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, which has long been the organism of choice for behavioral genetics and comes with tools to fluorescently label, manipulate the activity of, and optically record from genetically targeted neurons.

Robert Gross, M.D., Ph.D.
MBNA/Bowman Professor of Neurosurgery
Department of Neurosurgery
Emory University

Research Focus

(1) Cellular and Gene Therapy for Parkinson’s Disease

Elucidation of the role of axon guidance molecules in the development and reconstruction of the nigrostriatal pathway, which degenerates in Parkinson’s Disease, and development of gene therapy approaches to improve axon outgrowth for reconstruction. This approach, which encompasses molecular and cellular engineering in combination with neurotransplantation, may be generally useful in reconstructive approaches for many types of nervous system degeneration and injury, including spinal cord injury and stroke.

(2) Electrical and Optogenetic Neuromodulation and Closed-Loop Feedback of the Brain for Epilepsy

Development of novel strategies for the treatment of intractable focal epilepsy through the use of microelectrode recording techniques using closed-loop, adaptive algorithms to drive multielectrode microstimulation of brain nuclei involved in seizure modulation. Extension to optogenetic techniques for neuromodulation for epilepsy. Role of neuromodulation for mood and memory disturbance in epilepsy.

Annaelle Devergnas, Ph.D.
Associate Professor 
Department of Neurology
Emory University

Annaelle Devergnas is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology of Emory University and works at the Yerkes National Primate Center. She is an electrophysiologist expert with additional training in cognitive neurology. She obtained her PhD in France under the direction of Professor AL Benabid. During her PhD, she studied the implication of the basal ganglia in focal motor seizure on a non-human primate model. In 2009, she joined Pr. T Wichmann lab at Emory University to study the relationship between oscillatory activity and parkinsonism in a progressive model of MPTP treated monkeys. Recently, she became the director of the Neuromodulation lab at Yerkes which focuses on electrophysiological pathway of seizures and new treatment for epilepsy.

“Neural Codes and Maps in Whisker Somatosensory Cortex”

Research:

Welcome to the Feldman Lab! We are a neuroscience research team at the University of California, Berkeley studying the development and function of neural circuits in the cerebral cortex.

How do neural circuits in the brain’s cerebral cortex mediate sensation, memory, voluntary movement, and higher functions, and how does this break down in neurological disease? Our lab seeks to answer these questions by studying cortical function at the synaptic, circuit, and information processing levels. We study how cortical circuits process sensory information, adapt to experience, and store information during learning. We investigate the cellular and circuit mechanisms for brain plasticity, and the homeostatic mechanisms that maintain proper cortical function across age and experience. We study the micro-organization of sensory maps in the cortex to reveal principles of information processing and circuit design. We apply this understanding of normal brain function to develop new insights into neurological disorders, including autism and epilepsy.

Approaches include synaptic physiology, 2-photon calcium imaging, in vivo circuit physiology and optogenetics, and quantitative sensory behavior. The model system is the somatosensory cortex of rodents, which is a leading system for understanding cortical neuron and circuit function and plasticity (e.g., Feldmeyer 2007, Diamond et al., 2008, Feldman 2009, Feldman 2012).

Our lab is part of the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology, and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley. Our recent research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI).

“Mechanisms of Mapping Space in Human Memory”

Research:

1) We are interested in understanding the neural and cognitive events that give rise to episodic memory, and the factors that influence the efficacy of the declarative memory system in both health and disease. One such factor is psychological stress, which data suggest can disrupt relevant neural networks at various levels. Consequently, by altering memory function, stress from health, social, economic, and other challenges may have a significant impact on daily function.

We are developing experiments to quantify how stress influences the detail with which memories are both formed and retrieved, and test predictions about how such changes relate to network-level mechanisms in the brain.

One of our goals will be to expand the scope of this research from short-term impacts of stress to understanding how anxiety-related disorders and the long-term experience of stress affect both structure and function underlying memory and planning.

2) People vary widely in their memory and navigation abilities, but the neural bases for these individual differences are not well understood. We are interested in neural and cognitive traits that influence inherent processing abilities, as well as differences in processing strategies that impact memory and behavior. In keeping with a systems-level perspective of memory, considerable variance in individual abilities may relate to 1) structural and functional integrity within hippocampal subfield circuitry, which can impact the detail and discriminability of memories, and 2) network differences in how frontostriatal circuitry, along with parietal attention mechanisms, interacts with the hippocampus. These network differences may have widespread impacts on how individuals allocate cognitive resources towards memory and behavior, and mediate the impact of memory-influencing factors such as stressors.

 3) In stimulus rich, real-world settings, numerous contextual signals may vie for control of attention and influence what is stored in memory. Extant evidence from rodents suggests that memories may be structured within contextual hierarchies (e.g., memories for a building are stored in relation to the town in which it resides). A broad goal for our research is to understand how spatial and non-spatial memory are structured in humans; preliminary data from our research suggests that contextually grounded hierarchies may be an organizing principle for functions along the rostro-caudal axis of the hippocampus. Our research aims to delineate how contextual traces interact to govern memory formation and retrieval, and to test the mechanisms that allow humans to both flexibly access distinct memories and to use associative structures to generalize across experiences.

This presentation can be seen via BlueJeans: https://bluejeans.com/824485104/

Alison Barth, Ph.D.
Professor 
Department of Biological Sciences
Carnegie Mellon University
 

Research:

How does experience shape the brain? Research in the Barth lab is focused on understanding how experience assembles and alters the properties of neural circuits in the cerebral cortex, in both normal and disease states. The lab has a specific focus on somatosensation in the mouse model system, where specific types of sensory input from the skin are used to drive neural activity to change the strength of synaptic connections and the firing output of cortical neurons. This neural plasticity can result in enhanced perceptual capabilities and influence subsequent learning. A detailed examination of how synapses are changed by experience is revealing fundamental principles about both perception and learning across many neural systems. In addition, researchers in the lab are using electrophysiological recordings, electron microscopy, and computational modeling to understand how functional networks are constructed and optimized in the neocortex. Experiments take advantage of transgenic mice to manipulate gene expression and label defined neural subsets and whole-cell recording and imaging to quantitate the electrical properties of cortical neurons.

This presentation can be seen via BlueJeans: https://bluejeans.com/824485104/

Joseph Manns, Ph.D.
Associate Professor 
Department of Psychology
Emory University
 

Research:

Our research connects neuroscience with psychology to ask how the hippocampal memory system supports everyday memories. Many anatomical details of this system are shared across mammals, and our research has taken advantage of this evolutionary conservation by studying memory in both humans and rats. One goal of the laboratory is to answer fundamental questions such as how something as simple as temporal contiguity can oblige items to be associated in memory, how neural synchrony in the hippocampus and beyond can coordinate the functional dynamics of memory, and how activation of amygdala inputs into the hippocampus can enhance those dynamics. Another goal is to use the answers to those questions for pursuing therapies relevant to human memory disorders. For example, we have studied how systemic administration of M₁ muscarinic acetylcholine agonists can impact hippocampal activity in healthy rats and in transgenic rat models of Alzheimer’s disease. These two broad goals dovetail. Finding basic mechanisms for enhancing memory will be a window into the biological machinery that supports our everyday memories and will point to therapeutic treatments for diseases and disorders that impair memory. The long-term goal of the laboratory is to trace the details of this memory system from cells to circuits to cognition in order to diagram a blueprint of healthy memory from which one can diagnose and treat disorders of memory.

This presentation can be seen via BlueJeans: https://bluejeans.com/824485104/

Costas Arvanitis, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology 

Focused Ultrasound (FUS) is a unique technology for localizing energy deep into the brain. The mechanical energy deposited in the focal region, typically a few mm wide, can be utilized to induce thermal or mechanical effects to the brain tissue. Incorporation of microbubbles to the circulation allows focusing the acoustic energy down to cellular level providing the ability to selectively activate cell's mechanoreceptors, disrupt cellular and vascular membranes, such as the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB), and induce cell death. The unique advantages of this technology have led to major breakthroughs in functional neurosurgery, most notably to the noninvasive thalamotomy for essential tremor. Moreover, our recent work also demonstrated targeted, noninvasive blockade of cortical neuronal activity after FUS-induced BBB-permeabilization of the motor cortex of a rodent and the i.v. delivery of the inhibitory neurotransmitter gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA), a small molecule that normally does not reach the brain with systemic administration. Ultrasound alone can potentially activate mechanosensitive ion channels. Leveraging the recent discovery of piezo1 proteins, which are components of the mechanically activated calcium channels, we are currently characterizing this process with patch clamp methods in order to provide baseline cellular response and identify robust methods to induce ultrasonic-provoked action potentials. Harnessing these abilities of FUS technology not only opens up the possibility to map brain function and study the transient response and the association of different neuronal circuits, but also holds great promise for the treatment of central nervous system diseases and disorders.

This presentation can be seen via videoconference on the Emory Campus HSRB E260
 

Bo Duan, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
University of Michigan 

We have all experienced an itch. It is a modality of somatic sensation defined as an unpleasant sensation associated with the desire to scratch. Itch can be evoked in the skin directly by physical stimuli, such as gentle touch, referred as mechanical itch, or by chemical mediators, such as histamine, referred as chemical itch.  Mechanical itch was first described in healthy human subjects by Edward Titchener in 1909 that itch points were found in the skin by punctate stimulation with a fine hair. Under pathological conditions, mechanical itch is one of the common symptoms of most patients with chronic itch. In last decades, the neural circuits that transmit chemical itch have been well studied. The neural circuits processing mechanical itch, however, remain still unknown. My lab uses a combination of intersectional genetic manipulations, electrophysiology and behavior analyses to identify the key components of the spinal circuitry for mechanical itch in mice.

This presentation can be seen via videoconference on the Emory Campus HSRB E260

Yun Zhang, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
Harvard University 

During active exploration, the spatial and temporal pattern of the sensory cue perceived by an animal is shaped by the animal’s own movement. Thus, to move towards a sensory target, the nervous system needs to make rapid locomotory decisions by integrating the sensory information with the ongoing motor state. One of our studies addresses the signaling mechanisms underlying sensorimotor integration in C. elegans during olfactory steering, when the sinusoidal movements of the worm generate an in-phase oscillation in the concentration of the sampled odorant. We find that cholinergic neurotransmission encodes the oscillatory sensory response and the motor state of head undulations by acting through an acetylcholine-gated channel and a muscarinic acetylcholine receptor, respectively. These signals converge on two axonal domains of an interneuron RIA, where the sensory-evoked signal suppresses the motor-encoding signal to transform the spatial information of the odorant into the asymmetry between the axonal activities. The asymmetric synaptic outputs of the RIA axonal domains generate a directional bias in the locomotory trajectory. We also find that this type of sensorimotor integration can be modulated by experience to alter chemotactic movement. Together, our study reveals how cholinergic neurotransmission regulates sensorimotor integration during goal-directed locomotions. In the mammalian central nervous system, cholinergic neurotransmission integrates sensory processing with the internal state, including the information of motor generation. It also mediates the hippocampal theta wave that is proposed to subserve the sensorimotor integration underlying rapid behavioral decisions. Our work characterizes a simple form of cholinergic integration that regulates rapid neural processing during active exploration of the environment.
 

This presentation can be seen via videoconference on the Emory Campus HSRB E260

Marina Picciotto, Ph.D.
Charles B.G. Murphy Professor
Department of Psychiatry
Yale University

Acetylcholine signaling influences behaviors related to diverse functions, including drug abuse, attention, food intake, and mood. The ability of acetylcholine to coordinate the response of neuronal networks in many brain areas makes cholinergic modulation an essential mechanism underlying complex behaviors. Interestingly, increasing acetylcholine signaling using pharmacological or genetic methods can induce symptoms related to anxiety and depression in humans and in rodent models. Studies of anxiety- and depression-like behaviors in mice have identified specific cholinergic receptors and brain areas that are necessary for ACh effects. In addition, mouse studies have identified interactions between ACh and monoamine neurotransmitters that are targeted by most antidepressant medications that are effective in human patients. These studies suggest that abnormalities in the cholinergic system may be critical for the etiology of mood disorders and could represent a novel endophenotype of depression that could be targeted to develop novel antidepressant medications. Thus, ACh signaling could contribute to the balance between adaptive responses to stress and mood disorders.

This presentation can be seen via videoconference on the Emory Campus HSRB E260