Neuroscientists Talk Shop

Tuesday, March 20, 2012 The UTSA Neurosciences institute hosted an all-star panel of computational neuroscientists for a symposium on "Neural Dynamics & Coding."  This discussion, recorded after the day's talks, has Todd Troyer leading the group in covering a wide range of topics, including how to talk about coding as you move toward behavior, the distinction between coding and compu...

Thursday, March 8, 2012 Zen Faulkes (Assoc Professor, University of Texas Pan-American) discusses his work on characterizing nociceptors in crustaceans, and some of the issues surrounding ethical treatment of invertebrates that his work touches on.  Visit Zen's blog Neurodojo.com for some fun content on neuroethology and beyond. Duration: 39 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Sa...

Thursday, March 1, 2012 Neal Waxham (Professor, Dept of Neurobiology & Anatomy, UT Medical School at Houston) discusses molecular dynamics at the PSD, including CaMKII as a structural molecule, molecular trapping at the spine, and the potential modularity of the post synaptic density. Duration: 45 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Fidel Santamaria (Asst Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Re...

Thursday, February 23, 2012 Ulrich Mayr (Professor, University of Oregon) discusses cognitive inhibition during task switching, the common language of processing time between cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists, and his neuroeconomics work on risk behavior and altruism. Duration: 45 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Angelique Blackburn (PhD student, UTSA) Brian Derrick...

Thursday, February 9, 2012 Gina Kuperberg (Associate Professor, Tufts University & MGH) discusses her work on semantic processing during schizophrenia. She gives us a window into the use of language as a tool to probe cognitive processing during thought disorders. Duration: 42 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Nicole Wicha (Asst Prof, UTSA)...

Thursday, February 2, 2012 Laura Colgin (Asst Professor, UT Austin) talks with us about the early history of the study of brain oscillations, and discusses her work on the potential functional significance of frequency variations in the Gamma band. Duration: 34 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Brian Derrick (Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Pro...

Thursday, January 19, 2012 Martha Flanders (Professor, University Minnesota) discusses the ongoing debate in motor systems regarding modularity vs distributed organization in the motor planning system.  The role of efference copy in models of motor planning is discussed, as is hand movement sequencing and coarticulation of letters in sign language. Duration: 42 minutes Discussa...

Thursday, November 3, 2011 David Perkel (Professor, Washington University School of Med) discusses the homology between the avian song system and the basal ganglia circuit, and the role of motor variability in the adult songbird learning circuit.  The nature of cortex and its relation to cortex-like structures in the avian brain are discussed. Duration: 32 minutes Discussants:(...

Thursday, October 27, 2011 Karen Bales (Assoc Professor, UC Davis) discusses a monogamous primate model that she is using to study neural correlates of social bonding. Duration: 32 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Rama Ratnam (Asst Prof UTSA) Michelle Valero (Graduate Student, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for ori...

October 25, 2011 The UTSA Neurosciences institute hosted a distinguished panel of language neurobiologists for a symposium on "The Bilingual Brain."  This discussion, recorded after the day's talks, has Salma Quraishi leading the group in covering a wide range of topics, including the cognitive advantages conferred by bilingualism, cross-modal bilingualism and critical periods for langua...

Thursday, October 20, 2011 Stephen Lisberger (Professor, HHMI & UCSF) talks with Charles Wilson about solving the problem of how circuits generate behavior using low dimensional model systems, and why it is important to study variability in the nervous system. Duration: 30 minutes acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, October 13, 2011 Kamran Khodakhah (Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine) talks with the group about information coding in cerebellar cortex and his foray  into translational research with a model of rapid onset dystonia.  The  group discusses the current NIH push for translational research at the  expense of basic science and debates the idea of cerebel...

Thursday, September 29, 2011 Helen Scharfman (Professor, NYU Langone School of Medicine) talks about aberrant neurogenesis following seizure activity in the dentate gyrus, and discusses models of how newly born granule cells may aid in information storage and retrieval in memory process. Duration: 45 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Brian...

Thursday, September 22, 2011 Philip Sabes (Associate Professor, UCSF) talks about modeling complex behaviors that remain relevant and specifically tailored to the  physiology of real neurons and neural circuits in real time. Duration: 45 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA) Nicole Wicha (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles W...

Thursday, September 15, 2011 Thomas Blanpied (Assistant Professor, University of Maryland School of  Medicine) talks about molecular organization at the post-synaptic density, models of receptor mobility, and visualization of living synapses in real time. Duration: 45 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Brian Derrick (Prof, UTSA) Fidel Santamaria...

Thursday, September 1, 2011 David McCormick (Dorys McConnel Duberg Professor of Neurobiology, Yale School of Medicine) talks about flexibility of information coding in neural systems, and the complexity of undertaking studies of functional connectivity in cortical networks. Duration: 40 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Joseph Beatty (Post-doc, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof,...

Thursday, April 14, 2011 Kara Federmeier (Associate Professor, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) talks about prediction in language production and comprehension, and how ERPs are used to reveal differences in the time course and components of language processing.  Also discussed are the N400 as a measure of meaning, and general principles of language lateralization....

Thursday, March 24, 2011 Anne Young (Julianne Dorn Professor of Neurology, Harvard MGH) talks about her early studies of basal ganglia functional anatomy, and how they led  to her famed dual pathway model of the basal ganglia.  The group muses on the model's strengths and shortcomings over the decades, and discusses how it organized thinking in the field of basal ganglia r...

Thursday, March 10, 2011 Dieter Jaeger (Professor, Emory University) talks about the complexity of modeling systems whose biological function is ill-defined, and how to determine how complex a model needs to be.  The possibility of building structured queryable databases for mining neuroscience data is  discussed, as are thoughts on mouse model systems as an approximation of  the hu...

Thursday, March 3, 2011 Rama Ratnam hosts William Brownell (The Jake and Nina Kamin Chair of Otolaryngology and  Head and Neck Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine) as he discusses electromechanical signal processing in the cochlea.  Electromotility in  the nervous system is discussed, specifically in the context of cochlear amplification. Duration: 47 minutes Discussants:(...

Thursday, February 24, 2011 Thomas Cleland (Cornell University) discusses the idea of olfactory receptive fields, and the problems associated with compressing the high-dimensional parameters of odor space into two-dimensional brain space.  Analogies to the retina are considered. Duration: 41 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Salma Qu...

Thursday, February 17, 2011 Charlie Wilson hosts Joshua Berke (Associate Professor, University of Michigan  at Ann Arbor) in a discussion about action representations in the striatum.  The problematic nature of the term "representation" is  discussed, and analogies to the literature on spatial representations in  the hippocampus are considered. Duration: 43 minutes Discuss...

Thursday, February 3, 2011 Jonathan Pillow (Assistant Professor, UT Austin) talks about using assumption-free statistics to to extract structure from high dimensional data.  The group discusses levels of analysis in computational  modeling, and considers the merits of using functional behavior of neurons ("the what") in the absence of mechanism ("the how") as the starting point when mode...

Thursday, January 27, 2011 Leigh  Leasure (University of Houston) talks about the dueling effects of  exercise and binge alcohol consumption on cell health and proliferation  in the dentate gyrus.  The idea that excercise may protect against  binge-induced cell loss is discussed. Duration: 41 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Brian Derrick (Prof, UTSA) Carlos Pal...

Thursday, December 2, 2010 Bill Spain (Professor, University of Washington) talks about spike frequency adaptation in the avian auditory system and cortex, and considers the utility of adaptation for integrators vs coincidence detectors across various timescales.  In addition Bill talks about dividing his time as a  clinician, and how his clinical vantage point impacts his...