Critical thinking in neuroscience:

a guided reading seminar

(2007–2008)

This seminar is guided by the premise that the ability to read and analyze research papers is critical to the development of a researcher in neuroscience. The purpose of the seminar is to develop these skills by critically reading, presenting and discussing classics and recent influential papers in neuroscience. To do so, we will focus on several different topics. This semester, we chose the following 4 topics:

1. Reactivation of brain activity and its relation to memory consolidation.
2. Coding for positive (reward) vs. negative (aversive) reinforcement.
3. The role of brain oscillations.
4. Working memory and its representation in the brain.

The role of methodological as well as conceptual developments will be explored and emphasized.

Each meeting, two or three papers will be presented by students and discussed by the group. All students MUST read all the papers (2-3 papers per week).

Location: Small seminar room of the Department of Neurobiology (Benoyzio room #113).

Time: Sunday, 14:00 – 16:00.

Date

Papers

Presenter

TOPIC 1: Reactivation of brain activity and its relation to memory consolidation (NACHUM ULANOVSKY)

28/10/2007

Classics:

Wilson MA & McNaughton BL, Reactivation of hippocampal ensemble memories during sleep, Science 265, 676-9 (1994)

Skaggs WE & McNaughton BL, Replay of neuronal firing sequences in rat hippocampus during sleep following spatial experience, Science 271, 1870-3 (1996).

Orit Furman

Reactivation of sequences:

Lee AK & Wilson MA, Memory of sequential experience in the hippocampus during slow wave sleep, Neuron 36, 1183-94 (2002).

Yonatan Katz

4/11/2007

“The devil is in the details” – methodological considerations:

Tatsuno M, Lipa P & McNaughton BL. Methodological considerations on the use of template matching to study long-lasting memory trace replay, J. Neurosci. 26, 10727-42 (2006).

Oren Forkosh

Reverse replay versus forward replay:

Foster DJ & Wilson MA, Reverse replay of behavioural sequences in hippocampal place cells during the awake state, Nature 440, 680-3 (2006).

Diba K & Buzsaki G, Forward and reverse hippocampal place-cell sequences during ripples. Nat. Neurosci 10, 1241-2 (2007). [A very short paper – 2 pages]

Nachum

18/11/2007

Example of reactivation outside the hippocampus – in visual cortex:

Ji D & Wilson MA, Coordinated memory replay in the visual cortex and hippocampus during sleep, Nat. Neurosci. 10, 100-7 (2007)

Yaron Penn

Another example of reactivation outside the hippocampus – in the amygdala – using molecular techniques:

Reijmers LG, Perkins BL, Matsuo N & Mayford M. Localization of a stable neural correlate of associative memory, Science 317, 1230-3 (2007).

Dana Galili

TOPIC 2: Coding for positive (reward) vs. negative (aversive) reinforcement (RONY PAZ)

2/12/2007

Waelti P, Dickinson A, Schultz W. Dopamine responses comply with basic assumptions of formal learning theory Nature 2001 Jul 5;412(6842):43-8.

Arseny Finkelstein

Efrat Furst

O'Doherty JP, Dayan P, Friston K, Critchley H, Dolan RJ.

Temporal difference models and reward-related learning in the human brain.

Neuron. 2003 Apr 24;38(2):329-37.

Seymour B, O'Doherty JP, Dayan P, Koltzenburg M, Jones AK, Dolan RJ, Friston KJ, Frackowiak RS. Temporal difference models describe higher-order learning in humans. Nature. 2004 Jun 10;429(6992):664-7.

16/12/2007

Fiorillo CD, Tobler PN, Schultz W. Discrete coding of reward probability and uncertainty by dopamine neurons. Science. 2003 Mar 21;299(5614):1898-902.

Morris G, Arkadir D, Nevet A, Vaadia E, Bergman H. Coincident but distinct messages of midbrain dopamine and striatal tonically active neurons. Neuron. 2004 Jul 8;43(1):133-43.

Sharona Sedghani-Cohen

Avi Mendelsohn

Yacubian J, Gläscher J, Schroeder K, Sommer T, Braus DF, Büchel C.

Dissociable systems for gain- and loss-related value predictions and errors of prediction in the human brain. J Neurosci. 2006 Sep 13;26(37):9530-7.

Seymour B, O'Doherty JP, Koltzenburg M, Wiech K, Frackowiak R, Friston K, Dolan R. Opponent appetitive-aversive neural processes underlie predictive learning of pain relief. Nat Neurosci. 2005 Sep;8(9):1234-40.

23/12/2007

Paton JJ, Belova MA, Morrison SE, Salzman CD. The primate amygdala represents the positive and negative value of visual stimuli during learning. Nature. 2006 Feb 16;439(7078):865-70.

Inbar Saraf-Sinik

Eyal Cohen

Herry C, Bach DR, Esposito F, Di Salle F, Perrig WJ, Scheffler K, Lüthi A, Seifritz E. Processing of temporal unpredictability in human and animal amygdala. J Neurosci. 2007 May 30;27(22):5958-66.

TOPIC 3: The role of brain oscillations (NACHUM ULANOVSKY)

30/12/2007

Oscillations and sensory processing:

Gray CM, König P, Engel AK, Singer W. Oscillatory responses in cat visual cortex exhibit inter-columnar synchronization which reflects global stimulus properties. Nature 23, 334-337 (1989).

Perez-Orive J, Mazor O, Turner GC, Cassenaer S, Wilson RI, Laurent G. Oscillations and sparsening of odor representations in the mushroom body. Science 19, 359-365 (2002).

Avi Mendelsohn

Yonatan Katz

6/1/2008

Oscillations, rate coding, and temporal coding:

Mehta MR, Lee AK, Wilson MA. Role of experience and oscillations in transforming a rate code into a temporal code. Nature 13, 741-746 (2002).

Dragoi G, Buzsáki G. Temporal encoding of place sequences by hippocampal cell assemblies. Neuron 50, 145-157 (2006).

Dmitry