All events, 2015

Hitler's psychiatrists and neuroscientists: healers and researchers turned executioners

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Hour: 11:30
Location:
Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Building for Biomedical Research
Prof. Israel Strous
|
Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University; Deputy Hospital Director and Director of Ambulatory Services,Beer Yaakov Mental Health Center

At the heart of Hitler's murderous machine in Nazi Germany lay several powerful and influential doctors and neuroscientists providing the energy, scientific expertise and legitimacy for the process leading up to the Holocaust. Psychiatrists arguably more than any other medical specialty played a critical role; many of them demonstrating a profound depth of involvement and commitment to the atrocities. This included for the first time in history, psychiatrists seeking to systematically exterminate their patients. Several misconceptions led to this misconduct, which will be discussed. Psychiatry during this period provides a most horrifying example of how clinical management and neuroscience may be perverted by external forces.

A neural basis for persistence in learned behavioral states

Lecture
Date:
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Hour: 15:00
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Dr. Misha Ahrens
|
HHMI Janelia Research Campus

Contextual Processing in PTSD: neural circuits genes and sleep physiology

Lecture
Date:
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Hour: 12:30
Location:
Nella and Leon Benoziyo Building for Brain Research
Prof. Israel Liberzon
|
Dept of Psychiatry, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI

A new approach for reversing Alzheimer's disease pathology and restoring cognition: a lesson from tumor immunotherapy?

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Hour: 12:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Prof. Michal Schwartz
|
Department of Neurobiology, WIS

Studies over more than a decade have highlighted a pivotal role for the immune system in maintaining life-long brain plasticity. Such activity is achieved through the brain’s epithelial borders, comprised of the brain’s choroid plexus epithelium, which serves as a selective and educative gateway for the entry of healing immune cells to the brain. Activity of this gateway is dependent on the immune system, which almost paradoxically, dysfunctions in brain aging and neurodegenerative diseases, when this gateway is most greatly needed. Recently, we discovered that regulatory pathways that keep the normal and young immune system under control become limiting factors under Alzheimer’s disease pathology; breaking this immune regulatory pathway in a well-controlled way arrests AD and restores cognitive ability.

Goal-directed navigation with 3D neural compasses

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Hour: 12:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Arseny Finkelstein
|
Dept of Neurobiology, WIS

Although animals and humans move daily through complex three-dimensional (3D) environments, practically nothing is known about the encoding of 3D head direction in the brain. Moreover, very little is known about how neural circuits represent the location or direction of spatial goals – which is essential for goal-directed navigation. In the first part of the talk, I will present the first neural recordings of 3D head-direction cells from the hippocampal formation of flying and crawling bats, and will describe the functional organization and the surprising properties of these neurons. By using the head-direction system as an example, I will also discuss several theoretical considerations for the existence of both pure and conjunctive population codes in the brain. In the second part, I will present our new findings that suggest the existence of goal-direction and goal-proximity signals in the bat hippocampus – a vectorial representation that could support goal-directed navigation.

Prefrontal mechanisms of cognitive control

Conference
Date:
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Hour:
Location:
Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Building for Biomedical Research

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Visual search in the archer fish

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Hour: 12:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Prof. Ronen Segev
|
Life Sciences Dept, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

From detecting food to locating lurking predators, visual search -- the ability to find an object of interest against a background -- needs to be accurate and fast to ensure survival. In mammals, this led to the development of a parallel search mode, pop-out, which enables fast detection time that is not dependent on the number of distracting objects. Although it may be beneficial to most animals, pop-out behavior has been observed only in mammals, where its neural correlates are found as early as V1 in contextually modulated cells that encode aspects of saliency. I will describe our recent findings of pop-out visual search in the archer fish and discuss possible implications about universality of visual search among vertebrates.

Mapping computations to circuits: Neural coding transformation in the thalamocortical circuit during active sensation

Lecture
Date:
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Hour: 14:00
Location:
Nella and Leon Benoziyo Building for Brain Research
Dr. Diego Gutnisky
|
Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn, VA, USA

One fundamental question in neuroscience remains largely unanswered: how are computations implemented by structured neural circuits? Over the last fifty years we have learned how sensory, motor and cognitive information is represented in different regions of the mammalian brain. Anatomical studies are beginning to reveal precisely structured neural circuits, including stereotyped circuit motifs across brain areas subserving different functions. However, linking physiology and detailed anatomy remains elusive in most cases. We know little about activity in specific cell types, the nodes of the circuit diagram, in behaving animals. In our lab we study how tactile information is represented in different brain circuits in the mice vibrissal system. We train mice to move their whiskers to judge the location of an object presented in one of several locations and record extra- and intracellularly from specific neural types in this circuit. I’ll present recent results showing how tactile information is processed and transformed by specific neural types and circuits as it ascends from the sensory periphery to cortex.

Active sensing in bats - the long and short of it

Lecture
Date:
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Hour: 13:00
Location:
Nella and Leon Benoziyo Building for Brain Research
Dr. Stefan Greif
|
Max Planck Institute of Ornithology, Seewiesen, Germany

Bats have a unique view of the world: ‘seeing’ their environment with their ears through echolocation. They use this active sensing system to master their predominantly dark world, e.g. for detecting and targeting of small insect prey, navigating through complex vegetation or interaction with other individuals. Over the last decades we have developed a solid understanding of how bats apply echolocation to achieve this. However, many questions are still unsolved, e.g. assessment of larger objects like trees or even whole habitats. In my talk, I will show how bats recognize and deal with water surfaces. My results demonstrate that a recognition pattern can be very simple: for bats any smooth surface is perceived as a water surface. Likely through a long evolutionary consolidation without any contradicting experiences, this is phylogenetically wide spread among bats, extremely hardwired and even innate. In addition I will talk about the integration of varying sensory input, the role of spatial memory and potential evolutionarytraps that may arise from this. Echolocation is a rather short-ranged sensing system, which leaves the intriguing question of how bats orientate and navigate over long distances. They face this challenge not only during daily foraging trips but also on migration routes which can be over 1,000 kilometers long. Recent evidence has shown that bats can, for example, make use of the Earth’s magnetic field. However, the exact functional mechanism of this ability is as yet largely unknown. In this context, I will present data showing that our tested bat species recognizes the sky’s polarization pattern at dusk and uses it as a calibrating system for its magnetic compass. This is the only known case so far for a mammal to use this sensory light cue.

The interaction of synaptic plasticity and scaling and their role in memory dynamics

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Hour: 12:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Dr. Christian Tetzlaff
|
Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Max-Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Gottingen

Many experiments provide evidences that, after learning, human and animal memories are very dynamic and changeable. Amongst others, one intriguing and counterintuitive effect is the destabilization of memories by recalling them. In addition, some of these destabilized memories can be ‘rescued’ by sleep-induced consolidation while others not. Up to now, the basic principles underlying these effects are widely unknown. In this talk I will present our theoretical model in which the interaction between the biologically well-established processes of synaptic plasticity and scaling enables the formation of memories or rather Hebbian cell assemblies in neural networks. Furthermore, we can show that the dynamics of these cell assemblies are comparable to the intriguing dynamics of human and animal memories described above. Thus, this model serves as a further step to link biological processes on the neuronal scale to behavior on the psychological level.

Pages

All events, 2015

Hitler's psychiatrists and neuroscientists: healers and researchers turned executioners

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Hour: 11:30
Location:
Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Building for Biomedical Research
Prof. Israel Strous
|
Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University; Deputy Hospital Director and Director of Ambulatory Services,Beer Yaakov Mental Health Center

At the heart of Hitler's murderous machine in Nazi Germany lay several powerful and influential doctors and neuroscientists providing the energy, scientific expertise and legitimacy for the process leading up to the Holocaust. Psychiatrists arguably more than any other medical specialty played a critical role; many of them demonstrating a profound depth of involvement and commitment to the atrocities. This included for the first time in history, psychiatrists seeking to systematically exterminate their patients. Several misconceptions led to this misconduct, which will be discussed. Psychiatry during this period provides a most horrifying example of how clinical management and neuroscience may be perverted by external forces.

A neural basis for persistence in learned behavioral states

Lecture
Date:
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Hour: 15:00
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Dr. Misha Ahrens
|
HHMI Janelia Research Campus

Contextual Processing in PTSD: neural circuits genes and sleep physiology

Lecture
Date:
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Hour: 12:30
Location:
Nella and Leon Benoziyo Building for Brain Research
Prof. Israel Liberzon
|
Dept of Psychiatry, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI

A new approach for reversing Alzheimer's disease pathology and restoring cognition: a lesson from tumor immunotherapy?

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Hour: 12:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Prof. Michal Schwartz
|
Department of Neurobiology, WIS

Studies over more than a decade have highlighted a pivotal role for the immune system in maintaining life-long brain plasticity. Such activity is achieved through the brain’s epithelial borders, comprised of the brain’s choroid plexus epithelium, which serves as a selective and educative gateway for the entry of healing immune cells to the brain. Activity of this gateway is dependent on the immune system, which almost paradoxically, dysfunctions in brain aging and neurodegenerative diseases, when this gateway is most greatly needed. Recently, we discovered that regulatory pathways that keep the normal and young immune system under control become limiting factors under Alzheimer’s disease pathology; breaking this immune regulatory pathway in a well-controlled way arrests AD and restores cognitive ability.

Goal-directed navigation with 3D neural compasses

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Hour: 12:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Arseny Finkelstein
|
Dept of Neurobiology, WIS

Although animals and humans move daily through complex three-dimensional (3D) environments, practically nothing is known about the encoding of 3D head direction in the brain. Moreover, very little is known about how neural circuits represent the location or direction of spatial goals – which is essential for goal-directed navigation. In the first part of the talk, I will present the first neural recordings of 3D head-direction cells from the hippocampal formation of flying and crawling bats, and will describe the functional organization and the surprising properties of these neurons. By using the head-direction system as an example, I will also discuss several theoretical considerations for the existence of both pure and conjunctive population codes in the brain. In the second part, I will present our new findings that suggest the existence of goal-direction and goal-proximity signals in the bat hippocampus – a vectorial representation that could support goal-directed navigation.

Visual search in the archer fish

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Hour: 12:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Prof. Ronen Segev
|
Life Sciences Dept, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

From detecting food to locating lurking predators, visual search -- the ability to find an object of interest against a background -- needs to be accurate and fast to ensure survival. In mammals, this led to the development of a parallel search mode, pop-out, which enables fast detection time that is not dependent on the number of distracting objects. Although it may be beneficial to most animals, pop-out behavior has been observed only in mammals, where its neural correlates are found as early as V1 in contextually modulated cells that encode aspects of saliency. I will describe our recent findings of pop-out visual search in the archer fish and discuss possible implications about universality of visual search among vertebrates.

Mapping computations to circuits: Neural coding transformation in the thalamocortical circuit during active sensation

Lecture
Date:
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Hour: 14:00
Location:
Nella and Leon Benoziyo Building for Brain Research
Dr. Diego Gutnisky
|
Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn, VA, USA

One fundamental question in neuroscience remains largely unanswered: how are computations implemented by structured neural circuits? Over the last fifty years we have learned how sensory, motor and cognitive information is represented in different regions of the mammalian brain. Anatomical studies are beginning to reveal precisely structured neural circuits, including stereotyped circuit motifs across brain areas subserving different functions. However, linking physiology and detailed anatomy remains elusive in most cases. We know little about activity in specific cell types, the nodes of the circuit diagram, in behaving animals. In our lab we study how tactile information is represented in different brain circuits in the mice vibrissal system. We train mice to move their whiskers to judge the location of an object presented in one of several locations and record extra- and intracellularly from specific neural types in this circuit. I’ll present recent results showing how tactile information is processed and transformed by specific neural types and circuits as it ascends from the sensory periphery to cortex.

Active sensing in bats - the long and short of it

Lecture
Date:
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Hour: 13:00
Location:
Nella and Leon Benoziyo Building for Brain Research
Dr. Stefan Greif
|
Max Planck Institute of Ornithology, Seewiesen, Germany

Bats have a unique view of the world: ‘seeing’ their environment with their ears through echolocation. They use this active sensing system to master their predominantly dark world, e.g. for detecting and targeting of small insect prey, navigating through complex vegetation or interaction with other individuals. Over the last decades we have developed a solid understanding of how bats apply echolocation to achieve this. However, many questions are still unsolved, e.g. assessment of larger objects like trees or even whole habitats. In my talk, I will show how bats recognize and deal with water surfaces. My results demonstrate that a recognition pattern can be very simple: for bats any smooth surface is perceived as a water surface. Likely through a long evolutionary consolidation without any contradicting experiences, this is phylogenetically wide spread among bats, extremely hardwired and even innate. In addition I will talk about the integration of varying sensory input, the role of spatial memory and potential evolutionarytraps that may arise from this. Echolocation is a rather short-ranged sensing system, which leaves the intriguing question of how bats orientate and navigate over long distances. They face this challenge not only during daily foraging trips but also on migration routes which can be over 1,000 kilometers long. Recent evidence has shown that bats can, for example, make use of the Earth’s magnetic field. However, the exact functional mechanism of this ability is as yet largely unknown. In this context, I will present data showing that our tested bat species recognizes the sky’s polarization pattern at dusk and uses it as a calibrating system for its magnetic compass. This is the only known case so far for a mammal to use this sensory light cue.

The interaction of synaptic plasticity and scaling and their role in memory dynamics

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Hour: 12:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Dr. Christian Tetzlaff
|
Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Max-Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Gottingen

Many experiments provide evidences that, after learning, human and animal memories are very dynamic and changeable. Amongst others, one intriguing and counterintuitive effect is the destabilization of memories by recalling them. In addition, some of these destabilized memories can be ‘rescued’ by sleep-induced consolidation while others not. Up to now, the basic principles underlying these effects are widely unknown. In this talk I will present our theoretical model in which the interaction between the biologically well-established processes of synaptic plasticity and scaling enables the formation of memories or rather Hebbian cell assemblies in neural networks. Furthermore, we can show that the dynamics of these cell assemblies are comparable to the intriguing dynamics of human and animal memories described above. Thus, this model serves as a further step to link biological processes on the neuronal scale to behavior on the psychological level.

Cracking Mesoscopic Coding Principles in the Human Brain with Ultra-High Field Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Lecture
Date:
Sunday, May 3, 2015
Hour: 14:00 - 17:00
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Prof. Dr. Rainer Goebel
|
Maastricht University

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All events, 2015

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All events, 2015

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