Neuroscientists Talk Shop

Thursday, November 14, 2019 Stephen Maren (Texas A&M) talks about the common neural circuitry mediating fear conditioning and drug relapse. Duration: 39 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Isabel Muzzio (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, November 7, 2019 Ajay Dhaka (UW) talks about distinctions in itch (pruritis) and pain (nociception) somatosensation, and his discovery of overlapping mechanisms for these sensations via direct activation of different populations of TRP channel-expressing somatosensory neurons in zebrafish.  He also talks to us about developing zebrafish larvae as a behavioral screening tool for anal...

Thursday, October 31, 2019 Sophie Caron (U of Utah) discusses how sensory representations shift from ordered to random in the sensory system of drosophila. Duration: 35minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Lindsey Macpherson (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, October 24, 2019 Michelle Diaz (Penn State) discusses how language features might be organized in the neural architecture and talks about her structural and behavioral studies of how language production changes over the lifespan. Duration: 35minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Nicole Wicha (Professor, UTSA) Cha...

Thursday, October 10, 2019 Ottavio Arancio discusses the problematic aspects of therapeutic strategies built upon the amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer's disease, and his work defining the synaptic effects of soluble beta amyloid and tau oligomers in the etiopathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease. Duration: 39 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Hyoung-gon Lee (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraish...

Thursday, October 3, 2019 Mike Smotherman joins us again to talk echolocation in bats, specifically how physiological studies in his lab investigate the circuitry that shapes sonar pulse acoustics.  He discusses how bats in groups implement circuit plasticity to coordinate their sonar systems to minimize interference. Duration: 39 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Salma...

Thursday, September 12, 2019 Recorded as a panel discussion following the UTSA Neurosciences Institute’s 2019 research symposium on September 12, 2019.   Hosted by Charles Wilson Duration: 44 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Mark Bevan , Professor in Physiology, Northwestern University Robert Turner Professor, Pitt Jerrold Vitek , Mcknight Professor, University of Minnesota...

Thursday, April 18, 2019 Maya Henry (UT Austin) talks to us about her imaging studies of patients suffering from primary progressive aphasias, what they tell us about speech and language networks, and how her rehabilitation studies are demonstrating speech gains for patients with an otherwise poor degenerative prognosis. Duration: 39 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Re...

Wednesday, April 10, 2019 Brian Kaspar (AveXis Inc) talks about the realities and promise of building a single-dose gene transfer therapy for treating the prime gene defect in spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) type I.  He discusses his company’s modified adeno-associated virus 9 approach to human gene therapy that is currently in highly promising clinical trials, for SMA, and in development for R...

Thursday, April 4, 2019 Craig Blackstone (UT Health San Antonio) tells us about new vantage points on endoplasmic reticulum structure, dynamics and function through advanced imaging technologies in the context of his work on hereditary spastic paraplegias. Duration: 46 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Michael Hanna (Asst Professor of Practice, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA...

Tuesday, March 21, 2019 Sarah Hopp (UT Health San Antonio) discusses tau seeding in the developing pathology of Alzheimer's disease, and the role that microglia may play in supporting it. Duration: 46 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, February 21, 2019 Catharine Winstanley (UBC Vancouver) discusses mechanisms of impulsive and poor decision-making in gambling and its intersection with mechanisms of disparate drugs of abuse, addiction and relapse.  The group considers whether addiction is a single disease, and whether catecholamine systems are the final common pathway for various addiction trajectories. (apologies...

Thursday, February 14, 2019 Jon Sakata (McGill) talks about songbird plasticity in the zebra finch, and how brain circuits transduce social information to modulate the learning and control of birdsong. Duration: 37 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper f...

Thursday, February 7, 2019 This episode is a panel discussion recorded as the conclusion of a two part series showcasing Present & Future Frameworks in Theoretical Neuroscience , an international workshop hosted by Horacio Rotstein (NJIT) & Fidel Santamaria (UTSA) through support of NSF’s Brain Initiative (see episode 194 for Part I).  Part II is a round table with a new group that re...

Monday, February 4, 2019 This episode is a panel discussion recorded as Part I of a two part series on the recent Present & Future Frameworks in Theoretical Neuroscience , an international workshop hosted by Horacio Rotstein (NJIT) & Fidel Santamaria (UTSA) with support from the NSF’s Brain Initiative.  Part I is a preamble recorded on day one of the meeting, in which some friends of...

Thursday, January 31, 2019 Liberty Hamilton (UT Austin) talks about using electrocorticography to study the representation and processing of speech sounds in the auditory cortex. Duration: 40 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA Nicole Wicha (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM...

Thursday, January 24, 2019 Jeff Golden (Harvard Medical School) talks about dichotomies in mitochondrial dynamics observed in the migration of cortical neurons and interneurons in early development and neuronal patterning. Duration: 42 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Jenny Hsieh (Semmes Foundation Chair, UTSA) Asif Maroof (Asst Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Tr...

Thursday, January 17, 2019 Sarah C. Woolley (McGill) discusses her work on the neural basis of song preference in female songbirds.  She describes experiments that manipulate in vivo dopaminergic pathways in the auditory system to change song preference. Duration: 35 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Charles Wils...

Thursday, November 1, 2018 Maurice Chacron (McGill) talks about optimal coding mechanisms invoked in sensory perception of the electric fish.  He discusses his “awake behaving” model, through which he has deciphered that feedback from descending inputs tunes sensory responses through a “temporal whitening” function which may be conserved across species. Duration: 42 minutes Discussants : (in...

Thursday, October 25, 2018 Josh Dudman (HHMI Janelia) discusses his model of how the basal ganglia shape performance based on prior experience by controlling the gain of movement kinematics.  The group considers this history-dependent gain computation model alongside the traditional action selection model. Duration: 43 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Juan Morales (PhD student, U...

Thursday, October 4, 2018 Marisela Morales (NIDA) discusses the anatomical and functional complexity of VTA projections, including the distinctive synaptic architecture of dual GABAergic glutamatergic synapses in the habenula, and the indispensability of electron microscopy for understanding the diversity of brain circuits. Duration: 43 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini...

Thursday, September 27, 2018 Chip Gerfen (NIMH) talks about his defining work in describing the input-output organization of the basal ganglia, and how early ideas of pathway-level organization principles have yielded an appreciation of the explosive anatomical and molecular diversity of individual neurons within those pathways.  The group discusses Chip’s new spearheading of single axon anat...

Thursday, March 22, 2018 Ulrich Hofmann (Freiburg University) discusses the priorities and realities in implementing control theory, computational models and engineering principles to build implantable devices that can read and write to the nervous system as an approach for treating CNS disorders like paralysis, epilepsy, depression, and others. Duration: 45 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical...

Thursday, March 1, 2018 John Mantsch (Marquette University) discusses various animal models of drug relapse that differentiate aspects of how stress impinges on reward circuits to promote drug seeking. Duration: 40 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Professor, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles...

Thursday, February 22, 2018 Ed Stern (Bar-Ilan University, Israel) discusses corticostriatal networks in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease. Duration: 42 minutes Discussants : (in alphabetical order) Alfonso Apicella (Asst Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.