Max Planck Florida’s Neurotransmissions Podcast

Our two-part series of interviews with Dr. Bert Sakmann continues as he explains to Joe and Misha how he got interested in neuroscience, his work on characterizing ion channels, the finer points of electrophysiology and the importance of synapses. If you have not had a chance yet, make sure to check out part one of our conversation with Dr. Sakmann.

How does a Max Planck Institute end up in Florida? On this special 50th episode we have the first part of a two-part series of interviews recorded in June 2016, with Dr. Bert Sakmann, Nobel Prize Recipient and the Inaugural Scientific Director of Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience. Joe and Misha sit down with Dr. Sakmann as he recounts the early days of Max Planck Florida: kiteboarding,...

How does language get processed in the brain? New research is taking our understanding of how the brain processes language and speech beyond Broca and Wernicke's areas. This week Joe and Misha are joined by Dr. David Poeppel Director of the Department of Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt and Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York Univers...

In this episode, Misha and Andre are joined by Dr. Bernardo Rudy, Valentino D.B. Mazzia, MD, JD Professor of Anesthesiology, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative Care, and Pain Medicine and Professor, Department of Neuroscience and Physiology at New York University. Learn the curious path Dr. Rudy took to obtaining two PhDs, his labs work on the types and roles of cortical interneurons and...

How visual is the visual cortex? In this episode, Joe and Jeremy are joined by Dr. Nathalie Rochefort, Sir Henry Dale Fellow and Chancellor's Fellow at the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh to discuss why long-held views about the function of the visual cortex are being challenged today. Learn how Dr. Rochefort went from studying the history of sciences to making h...

What approaches are researchers taking to understand which neurons talk to each other in the brain? Joe and Misha sit down with Dr. Moritz Helmstaedter, Scientific Director and Head of the Department of Connectomics at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt Germany. They'll discuss the current state of connectomics, the approaches researchers are taking, the challenges of working...

We dug up another episode from our archive for you to enjoy this week. Misha, Joe, and guest co-host Dr. Helena Decker, MPFI's Head of Scientific Communications, sit down with Dr. Roberto Lent, head of the Laboratory for Neuroplasticity of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Federal do Rio de Janeiro. They will discuss Dr. Lent's efforts in counting the neurons of the brain, the concept of the d...

Joe and Andre sit down with Dr. Pierre Vanderhaeghen, Group leader at VIB research institute. Learn about what makes the human brain special methods that Dr. Vanderhaeghen's group uses to investigate the development of the human brain, and how the preservation of early traits through adulthood could play a role in making the human brain adaptable.

On this episode Joe and first time co-host Jeremy Chang sit down with Dr. Gyorgy Buzsaki, Biggs Professor of Neuroscience at New York University. They explore the types of oscillatory activity that occurs within the brain and how this activity may aid in the packaging of information within the brain. They also discuss the classical empiricists viewpoint of the brain and how approaching the questio...

On this episode, we returned to our vault and found this March 2016 discussion (our first recording ever!), where Joe, Misha, and Ben were joined by Dr. Jason Kerr, Director of the Department of Behavior and Brain Organization the Center of Advanced European Studies and Research (caesar). In a wide-ranging conversation, they’ll discuss the adventure in neuroscience that would end up with a New Zea...

On our final episode recorded at SfN 2017, Joe sits down with Dr. Christine Constantinople, now Assistant Professor at New York University, to discuss risk-reward learning and starting up a lab. Then Joe sits down with Dr. Matthew Lovett-Baron, postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and soon to be Assistant Professor in the Neurobiology section at UCSD, to discuss his work using zebrafish the...

Our series of in the field recordings from SfN 2017 continues as Misha gets a chance to catch up again with Dr. BN Queenan (Episode 13), associate director of the UCSB Brain Initiative, to chat about the role of institutional and implicit biases in the gender inequality in academia.

Once again the podcast hit to road to meet up with new and old friends to talk all things neuroscience at the 2017 SfN meeting in Washington D.C. This week Misha sat down with Dr. Mark Burns, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at Georgetown University, to discuss traumatic brain injury and chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

How do you learn the appropriate response to a fear-inducing stimulus? Misha and Andre are joined on this episode by Dr. Andreas Lüthi, Group Leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel Switzerland to discuss the role of the amygdala in attributing emotional significance to external stimuli and the generation of appropriate responses. Learn more about how Dr. Luthi...

On this episode, Michael is joined by former MPFI Post-Baccalaureate Research Experience (PRE) Fellow Amber Luongo and Dr. Hisashi Umemori, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hisashi studies synaptic connections between neurons and how they established, refined and maintained in the nervous system. Learn more about Dr. Hisashi identifies molecules he calls synaptic org...

On this episode, Joe and Misha are joined by Dr. Cris Niell, Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Oregon. Learn how Dr. Niell is looking at the effects of meditation in the brain, how he got interested in the visual system of the mouse, the work his lab has done on predatory behavior, and why he’s expanding into the looking at the visual system of the octopus. We’l...

On this episode we’re digging back into the vault to a Spring 2016 conversation Joe, Misha, and Ben had with Dr Carol Mason Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology, Neuroscience and Ophthalmic Science at Columbia University and former Society for Neuroscience President. Topics they’ll cover include the work Dr. Mason’s group is doing looking how the brain wires together during early development, t...

What is it that defines us, nature or nurture? Michael and Andre sit down with Liqun Luo, Professor of Biology at Stanford University, to discuss the role of genetics and experience in the development of the brain. As a trained geneticist Dr. Luo uses both flies and mice to investigate the development of the nervous system. Learn more about how the olfactory system differs from other sensory modal...

On this episode of Max Planck Florida's Neurotransmissions Podcast Misha and Paul sit down with Dr. Brenda Bloodgood, assistant professor in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of California San Diego. Hear how Dr. Bloodgood’s path from aspiring undergraduate neuroscientist to professor informs her approach to not only her lab’s research linking gene expression to neural plastici...

On this episode of Max Planck Florida's Neurotransmissions Dr. Paul Evans, former Postdoc in the Yasuda lab and current MPFI Academic Programs Coordinator, and Dr. Audrey Bonnan, Postdoc in the Christie lab, are joined by Dr. Claudia Bagni. Dr. Bagni is the Professor and Chair in Fundamental Neuroscience at the University of Lausanne where her group has been studying the cellular and molecular mec...

Sometimes studying smaller, simpler problems can give us valuable insights into larger, more complex ones. On this episode of Max Planck Florida's Neurotransmissions podcast, Joe and Dan Wilson, former IMPRS student and current postdoc at Harvard, sit down with Janelia Group Leader Dr. Vivek Jayaraman to discuss his circuitous path from aerospace engineering to neuroscience. Learn how the simplest...

Can investigating how the neocortex is built further our understanding of the function of the brain? Join Michael and Andre as they sit down with Dr. Oscar Marin, Director and Group Leader at the Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at Kings College London to discuss how the brain is built. In a wide-ranging conversation, they explore the components that come together to build the brain, how prog...

Join Joe and Misha as they survey the neocortex with Dr. Andreas Burkhalter, Professor of Anatomy and Neurobiology at Washington University. As they discuss Dr. Burkhalter's path from studying vision in ants and pigeons to his current work studying rodent neocortex learn about the evolutionary development of neocortex, different theories underpinning sensory processing, the newly found modular org...

On this podcast, Misha, Joe, and Matthias sit down with Dr. David DiGregorio, group leader of the Dynamic Neuronal Imaging Laboratory at Institut Pasteur, to discuss the cerebellum. From the cerebellum’s role in motor planning to the growing interest in its role in cognitive function, they will explore how Dr. DiGregorio’s model-based approaches are allowing his team to test hypotheses about the c...

How does an aspiring poet become one of the pioneers of new model systems for studying the visual cortex? Find out as Joe and Ben sit down with Dr. Michael Stryker, Professor of Physiology at the University of California San Francisco, to chat about his journey through science and how graduate student-mentor relationships have evolved over time.