Interested in the interplay of artificial intelligence and neuroscience? Then you don’t want to miss Dr. Matthew Botvinick’s talk on deep reinforcement learning this Tuesday, June 15 at 4pm. Dr. Botvinick is the director of Neuroscience research at DeepMind and an Honorary Professor at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at University College London (UCL). He completed his undergraduate studies at Stanford University in 1989, medical studies at Cornell University in 1994, and PhD in psychology and cognitive neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University in 2001. Dr. Botvinick’s work at Deep ..read more

What information do dopamine circuits in the brain carry? How does the information encoded by this powerful neurotransmitter form our habits, moods, and personalities? Dr. Talia Lerner, an assistant professor at Northwestern University, is blazing the path towards finding out. Dr. Lerner is interested in how dopamine circuit architecture regulates learning, habits, and mental disorder risk by understanding how dopamine generates and disseminates information. Not only an amazing scientist, Dr. Lerner is also focused on promoting inclusivity and openness in academia as a role model for women in ..read more

Dr. Michael Hausser is a Wellcome Principal Research Fellow and Professor of Neuroscience at University College London. The Hausser lab combines cellular and systems neuroscience in order to examine neural circuit computations at the cellular level in the mammalian brain, with a special focus on the role of dendrites. In 2015, Dr. Hausser was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for his fundamental contributions to our understanding of how dendrites contribute to computation in the mammalian brain, presenting dendrites as independent processing and signaling units that perform local computati ..read more

Nerve terminals in the brain must synthesize ATP on demand to sustain function. Here, Ashrafi, de Juan-Sanz, et al. show that axonal mitochondria use the brain-specific MCU regulator MICU3 to allow efficient Ca2+ uptake in order to accelerate ATP production. The focus of Dr. Tim Ryan’s lab is the study of the molecular basis of synaptic transmission in the mammalian brain. Dr.Ryan’s primary interests lie in understanding the molecular basis of synaptic performance. They use biophysical tools to examine synapse function. These tools provide single synapse measurements of exocytosis, endocytosis ..read more

Dr. Peter Scheiffele is a professor at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, where his group studies the molecular mechanisms underlying formation of neuronal circuits both in health and diseases such as autism. Dr. Scheiffele’s pioneering work on how trans-synaptic signals such as neuroligin and neurexin promote synapse formation and stabilization has led the field for over two decades. Currently, the group is interested in alternative splicing as a generator of the molecular diversity underlying synaptic specificity, as well as the role of autism risk factors such as neuroligin-3 (Nlgn3) in s ..read more

Dr. Mark Churchland is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and the co-director of the Grossman Center for the Statistic of Mind at Columbia University. The Churchland lab studies how movement is produced by neural activity. His groups examines, using a computational approach, how motor commands might be produced by recurrently connected networks with strong internal dynamics.   Typically, when we examine neural data, we plot the activity of neurons against time. This allows us to examine how individual cells respond in nuanced ways for a given context, but tells ..read more

Dr. Karl Friston, one of the most influential neuroscientists in the world, is a Professor of Neuroscience at University College London. According to the Google Scholar Citations public profiles, he ranked the 20th with 267346 citations and h-index 232 among most highly cited researchers. In 1990, he invented statistical parametric mapping, one of the most fundamental and essential techniques used in functional magnetic resonance imaging. The corresponding software SPM – the latest version SPM just released in 2020 – is the most commonly used software for fMRI data analysis. Similarly, another ..read more

Dr. Darcy Kelley is the Harold Weintraub Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, where her lab studies the neurobiology and evolution of social communication through their investigation of vocal signaling in African clawed frogs, Xenopus. With a repertoire of vocal signals and responses produced in a manner dependent on the sex of the signaler, the sex of the recipient and the social context, the Xenopus model allows the Kelley lab to address the fascinating question of how the nervous system produces and responds to social signals. Applying electrophysiological techniques to ..read more

With doctoral training in microbiology and immunology and a postdoctoral background in the Department of Neurology, Dr. Amanda Brown bridges her expertise in the two fields in order to better uncover the pathogenesis of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND). It has been shown that 20% of untreated individuals infected with HIV can have severe neurocognitive symptoms that manifest as gait abnormalities, memory impairment, and encephalitis.  Though antiretroviral treatment has greatly reduced severe neurocognitive comorbidities due to HIV infection, neurocognitive functional deficit ..read more

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a devastating disorder for which there is very little treatment. A progressive illness that primarily targets the movement-related dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra (SN) area of the brain, PD slowly depletes them (Fig 1). Symptoms include slowed movement, tremor, impaired posture, rigid muscles, and an impairment and eventual loss of automatic movements. By the time these symptoms are seen in patients, the loss of dopamine cells in the SN is usually quite severe. Current treatment for PD focuses on supplementing the lost dopamine, which is beneficial at the s ..read more