Neuroscientists Talk Shop

Thursday, January 28, 2010 Janet  Best (Assistant Professor, Ohio State University) discusses her take as  a math biologist on the interplay between applied math and biology.  She and Kelly Suter (UTSA) talk about their collaboration  in which they  model the irregular firing patterns of GnRH neurons at puberty as mixed mode oscillators. Stay tuned after the credits for some sea squirt trivia, courtesy of C. Wilson. Duration: 38 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Sayanti Bannerji (Graduate Student, OSU) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Kelly Suter (Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, January 21, 2010 Suzana  Herculano-Houzel (Professor, Universidad Federal de Rio) discusses  cortical scaling rules across phylogeny, the theory of human cortical  expansion in mammalian evolution, and how deceptively simple, almost  minimalist experiments have the power to shake dogma. Duration: 36 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Jim Bower (Prof, UTSA, UTHSCSA) Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA) Carlos Paladini (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, December 3, 2009 Asif  Ghazanfar (Assistant Professor, Princeton University) discusses the  relationship between the brain, the body and environmental context, and  how he is using the relationship between the statistical structure of  speech and neural oscillations to probe the evolution of language. Duration: 53 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Rama Ratnam (Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA) Nicole Wicha (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Monday, November 30, 2009 Katalin  Gothard (Associate Professor, University of Arizona) expands on the  role of amygdala in fear conditioning, emphasizing that the ecology of a  species and the subtle social cues that drive its behavioral repertoire  are key to undertaking studies of amygdala function. Duration: 38 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Jose Bargas Diaz (Professor, UNAM) Salma Quraishi (Asst Prof, UTSA) Rama Ratnam (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, November 12, 2009 Daniel  Lodge (Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, UT Health Sciences Center  San Antonio) discusses mouse models of schizophrenia and how mesolimbic  dopamine modulation by the ventral hypothalamus may underlie some of the  positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Duration: 33 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Rama Ratnam (Asst Prof, UTSA) Carlos Paladini (Asst Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 Nancy  Wexler (Higgins Professor of Neuropsychology, Columbia University  College of Physicians & Surgeons, President Hereditary Disease  Foundation) and historian Alice Wexler (Research Scholar, UCLA Center  for the Study of Women) discuss the history of the Huntington's Disease  Collaborative effort, and new efforts toward a search for the cure. Duration: 64 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Asst Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Fidel Santamaria (Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) Musical credit: Jonathan Coulton "That Spells DNA".

Thursday, November 5, 2009 Ila  Fiete (Assistant Professor, Center for Learning & Memory, UT  Austin) discusses the "how" and the "why" of rate coding, the principles  of sparseness, capacity and optimality, drawing on her work on temporal  coding of song in HVC and hippocampal grid cells. Duration: 47 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Michael Farries (Post-doc Fellow, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Rama Ratnam (Asst Prof, UTSA) Fidel Santamaria (Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, October 29, 2009 Bernd  Fritzsch (Professor & Chair, University of Iowa) provides an  historical perspective on developmental genetics, and the changing  concept of lineage from a genetic point of view. Duration: 52 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Gary Gaufo (Asst Professor, UTSA) Carlos Paladini (Asst Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, October 15, 2009 Garret  Stuber (Associate Scientist/Bonci Lab, Gallo Institute UCSF) discusses  how he is adapting optogenetic tools to study reward learning. Duration: 44 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Michael Farries (Post-doc Fellow, UTSA) Carlos Paladini (Asst Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, October 8, 2009 Dennis  McFadden (Ashbel Smith Professor, UT Austin) discusses otoacoustic  emissions, their purpose, and how he is using them as a possible measure  of early sexual differentiation. Duration: 42 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Rama Ratnam (Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA) Michelle Valero (PhD Student, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, September 24, 2009 Brenton  Cooper (Assistant Professor, Texas Christian University) discusses  peripheral constraints (i.e., sensory feedback and motor control) on  song development. Duration: 38 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Michael Farries (Post-doc, UTSA) Carlos Paladini (Asst Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, September 17, 2009 Melissa  Saenz, (Post-doc, Christof Koch Lab, CalTech) discusses cross modal  brain plasticity with respect to cortical specialization, and her  discovery of the new phenomenon, auditory synesthesia. Duration: 40 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Fidel Santamaria (Asst Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, September 10, 2009 Tianyi  Mao, (Assistant Professor, Vollum Institute, Oregon Health Sciences  University; currently Svoboda Lab, Janelia Farm) talk about  characterizing cell types and neural circuits with optogenetic markers. Duration: 35 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Asst Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, September 3, 2009 Massimo  Tabaton, (Professor of Neurology, University of Genova) gives a  critical appraisal of the amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer's Disease. Duration: 44 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) George Perry (Dean, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Fidel Santamaria (Asst Prof, UTSA Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009 Christof  Koch, (Lois & Victor Troendle Professor of Cognitive &  Behavioral Biology, Caltech) talks about the neural correlates of  consciousness in a discussion hosted by Fidel Santamaria. Duration: 44 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Fidel Santamaria (Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA) Nicole Wicha (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Wednesday, April 21, 2009 Jim Surmeier (Northwestern University), Jochen Roeper (Goethe University,  Frankfurt), Bruce Bean (Harvard Medical School), Carlos Paladini  (UTSA), and John Williams (Oregon Health & Science University). On April 21st, the UTSA Neurosciences Institute hosted an all-star panel of physiologists for a symposium on "Ion Channels and Firing Patterns of Dopamine Neurons."   This discussion, recorded after the day's talks, has Charles Wilson leading the group in covering a wide range of topics, including ionic  mechanisms that drive tonic and phasic activity of dopamine neurons, the  purpose of intrinsic pacemaking to dopamine signaling, and recent work  that highlights how certain patterns of activity can facilitate calcium  toxicity and cell death in Parkinson's Disease. Duration: 48 minutes acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009 David  Weiss, (Professor & Chair Dept of Physiology, University of Texas  Health Sciences Center - San Antonio) talks about modeling GABA receptor structure and function via fluorescence spectroscopy. Duration: 44 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Asst Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, April 9, 2009 Sridhar  Raghavachari, (Assistant Professor of Neurobiology, Duke University  Medical Center) talks about the breakdown of stochasticity in PSD  nanodomains. Duration: 39 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Asst Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA) Rama Ratnam (Asst Prof, UTSA) Fidel Santamaria (Asst Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, March 5, 2009 Nick  Spitzer (Professor & Co-director, Kavli Institute for Brain and  Mind at UCSD) discusses stimulus-driven neurotransmitter specification  in the dopamine system, and how calcium, electrical activity and  experience can rewire the brain. Duration: 55 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Asst Prof, UTSA) Gary Gaufo (Asst Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Asst Prof, UTSA) Fidel Santamaria (Asst Prof, UTSA Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, February 19, 2009 Stephen  DeArmond, (Professor, UCSF School of Medicine) talks about his  pioneering work on the pathogenesis of prion-related neurodegenerative  disease. Duration: 42 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Gary Gaufo (Asst Prof, UTSA) Carlos Paladini (Asst Prof, UTSA) George Perry (Dean & Professor, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: R Ratnam for generous loan of recording equipment; JM Tepper for original music.