Neuroscientists Talk Shop

Nick Hollon (Fellow, Xin Jin Lab, Salk Institute) leads us in a fantastic discussion on neuroeconomic approaches to understanding the neural correlates that govern value-based decision making. Duration: 41 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Carlos Paladini (Professor, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music. Thursday, March 9, 2017

Thursday, March 2, 2017 Christiane Linster (Cornell) discusses the theory and experimental realities at play in modeling learning, memory and neuromodulation in the olfactory system of rodents. Duration: 40 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 for original music.

Thursday, February 16, 2017 Bennet Ibey (Air Force Research Laboratory) discusses the biophysics of how membranes react to electric field pulses.  The discussion centers around our reference point for this phenomenom, electroporation. Duration: 48 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Fidel Santamaria (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, February 9, 2017 Peter Kalivas (Medical University of South Carolina) discusses how he is incorporating the tetrapartite synapse (pre-synapse, post-synapse, glia and extra-cellular matrix) into understanding addiction circuits and behavior. Duration: 38 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Assist Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, February 2, 2017 Harel Shouval (UT Health, Houston) discusses building models for how time constants of neural circuits adapt to reflect the time constraints of the world.  For instance, learning requires associating cues and later rewards, yet the teaching signal (the reward) is temporally distant from the cue itself well outside the timescale of individual neurons. For reference, the discussion touches on these papers. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28018206 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26377457 Duration: 41 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 for original music.

Thursday, January 26, 2017 Henry Yin (Duke) discusses a take on hierarchical movement control based on integrative approaches that marry kinematics and optogenetically controlled behavioral assays. The discussion references this review and paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27306757 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27091436 Duration: 34 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Matt Higgs (Asst Prof, UTSA) Carlos Paladini (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Fidel Santamaria (Assoc Prof, UTSA Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, January 19, 2017 Leslie Whitaker (NIDA Fellow) talks about how silent synapses in neuronal ensembles might underlie associative learning in the ventral tegmental area and prefrontal cortex. Duration: 39 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Alyssa Petko (PhD student, UTSA Claire Stelly (Fellow, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, December 1, 2016 David Weinshenker (Emory U School of Med ) discusses norepinephrine physiology and it’s relevance to the neuropathology of degenerative diseases and addiction. Duration: 47 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Alyssa Petko (PhD student, UTSA Salma Quraishi (Res Asst 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 3, 2016 Geoffrey Schoenbaum (National Institutes of Drug Abuse) discusses the advantages of using principles of learning theory in physiological investigations of associative learning and decision making.  The group reflects on the caveats of constraining behavior and losing the generality of coding Duration: 30 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, October 27, 2016 Art Riegel (Medical University of South Carolina) talks with the group about competing ideas of a dopamine neuron archetype and our deepening sense of the heterogeneity of dopamine neurons.  He discusses how he is examining the mechanisms and transducers of stress on the dopamine system.  Duration: 30 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Yoland Smith (Yerkes Primate Center, Emory University) discusses how the motor symptoms of Parkinsonism may not connect with our emerging  understanding of the the complex interconnectivity of the basal ganglia  thalamo-cortical loop.  The group discuss anatomical details of the  circuit in rodent and primate, and consider other possible network components that might generate the complex pathophysiology of  Parkinson’s Disease. Apologies for the crackle in  the recording.  We recommend not doing this one with headphones.  This one is worth it though, please bear with us! Duration: 43 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Alfonso Apicella (Asst Prof, UTSA) Carlos Paladini (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, September 22, 2016 Susan Patterson (Temple University) introduces neuro-immune interactions in the CNS, and discusses her ideas about how immune dysregulation and cognitive vulnerability may collide in the aging brain. Duration: 37 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Isabel Muzzio (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016 Howard Eichenbaum (Boston University) discusses “memory fields” in hippocampus as a way to think about the fundamental associative properties of the hippocampus.  He introduces place cells, and discusses the discovery that these cells code for time as well as space, as well as other  dimensions. Duration: 35 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Alfonso Apicella (Asst Prof, UTSA) Isabel Muzzio (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, August 25, 2016 Jim Lechleiter (Cellular & Structural Biology, UTHSCSA) gets us up to speed on astrocytes, their role in brain health and homeostasis, and their properties as excitable cells. Duration: 50 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Michael Beckstead (Assoc. Prof, UTHSCSA) Carlos Paladini (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, April 14, 2016 Laura Colgin (Center for Learning and Memory, UT Austin) returns to discuss hippocampal gamma band oscillations and their functional importance to memory encoding and retrieval. Duration: 37 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Brian Derrick (Prof, UTSA) Isabel Muzzio (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, April 7, 2016 Lee Goldstein (Boston University) discusses chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and how he is using mouse models to trace the salient features of the initiation and early neurogenic processes of the  disease. Duration: 37 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) George Perry (Dean, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Asst. Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, March 31, 2016 Russel Ray (Baylor College of Med) discusses gene editing techniques in building mouse model systems.  The group considers rhombomere origins and what role they might play in circuit organization. Duration: 43 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Gary Gaufo (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, March 25, 2015 Anatol  Kreizer (UCSF/Gladstone Institutes) discusses his studies on opposing motor properties of the basal ganglia motor circuit within the framework of the prevailing model of basal ganglia circuits delineated by DeLong in 1989.  The group critically assesses the current model, and discusses some questions of extrapyramidal functional anatomy that have yet to be worked out in the field. Duration: 38 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Carlos Paladini (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, March 24, 2016 Javier Medina (Baylor College of Med) discusses the cerebellum, its fundamental circuit, and attempts to understand it’s role in behavior as well as abstract toward a fundamental computational role for  cerebellum. Duration: 41 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Isabel Muzzio (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, February 18, 2016 Christopher Olsen (Medical College of Wisconsin) discusses the brain's motivational system, and whether the same mechanisms contribute to drugs of abuse as to natural reward. Duration: 37 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Matt Wanat (Asst. Prof, UTSA) Gerard Beaudoin (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.