Neuroscientists Talk Shop

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

Discussants:(in alphabetical order)

Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA)

Michael Farries (Fellow, UTSA)

Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA)

acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

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 modeling complex neural systems.

Duration: 39 minutes

Discussants:(in alphabetical order)

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.

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 Paladini (Asst Prof, UTSA)

Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA)

Fidel Santamaria (Asst Prof, UTSA)

Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA)

Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA, UTHSCSA)

acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

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 take on basic science research.

Duration: 41 minutes

Discussants:(in alphabetical order)

Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA)

Rama Ratnam (Asst Prof, UTSA)

Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA)

Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA)

acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Peter Narins (Professor, UCLA) talks about being a member of the founding generation of neuroethologists in the 1970s, and of his pivotal work describing both ultrasonic and subsonic communication in two very different species.

Duration: 44 minutes

Discussants:(in alphabetical order)

Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA)

Rama Ratnam (Asst Prof, UTSA)

Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA)

acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Ranier Gutierrez (Assistant Professor, CINVESTAV, Mexico) talks about oscillations in the distributed network that regulates feeding  behaviors, its entrainment by licking, and the significance of his finding that the responses of nucleus accumbens signal meal-related activity.

Duration: 37 minutes

Discussants:(in alphabetical order)

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.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Paul E. Gold (Professor, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) discusses the idea of studying memory loss to study the process of memory formation and his studies of forgetting in aging populations.

Duration: 37 minutes

Discussants:(in alphabetical order)

Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA)

Brian Derrick (Asst Prof, UTSA)

Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA)

acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Theoden (Tay) Netoff (Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota) discusses seizure from a clinical and dynamical systems perspective, and weighs in on the  debate as to whether epilepsy results from hypersynchrony or desynchrony of brain networks.

Duration: 42 minutes

Discussants:(in alphabetical order)

Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA)

Todd Troyer (Asst Prof, UTSA)

Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA)

acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Elizabeth Quinlan (University of Maryland, College Park) discusses the relevance of critical periods to plasticity, given current trends in post-critical  period plasticity.  She outlines her ideas about plasticity being latent  and actively constrained by ongoing activity, rather than fundamental  properties of the underlying anatomy.

Please be aware that there are some discontinuities due to editing.

Duration: 41 minutes

Discussants:(in alphabetical order)

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.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Clive Bramham (University of Bergen, Norway) discusses the BDNF and the immediate early gene ARC, and some of the  history of LTP and how it came to be known as a potential mnemonic mechanism in learning systems.

Duration: 39 minutes

Discussants:(in alphabetical order)

Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA)

Brian Derrick (Asst Prof, UTSA)

Charles Wilson (Prof, UTSA)

acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.