All events, All years

Latent cause inference in learning and decision making

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, January 3, 2023
Hour: 12:30 - 13:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Prof. Yael Niv
|
Neuroscience Institute and Psychology Department Princeton University

No two events are alike. But still, we learn, which means that we implicitly decide what events are similar enough that experience with one can inform us about what to do in another. We have suggested that this relies on parsing of incoming information into “clusters” according to inferred hidden (latent) causes. In this talk, I will present a computational model of this latent-cause inference process, and show supporting data from a variety of behavioral experiments in humans and rodents spanning from simple conditioning to memory to social decision making. I will also briefly discuss the relevance of this theory to mental health treatments.

Renewal and plasticity in oral and gastrointestinal epithelia

Lecture
Date:
Monday, January 2, 2023
Hour: 11:15 - 12:15
Location:
Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Building for Biomedical Research
Prof. Ophir Klein
|
Executive Director of Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children's Vice Dean for Children’s Services David and Meredith Kaplan Distinguished Chair in Children’s Health Professor of Orofacial Sciences and Pediatrics, UC San Francisco

How movement regulates defensive behaviours in a social context

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
Hour: 12:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Prof. Marta Moita
|
Behavioural Neuroscience Champalimaud Center, Lisbon

Our work concerns the general problem of adaptive behavior in response to predatory threats, and of the neural mechanisms underlying a choice between strategies. Interacting predators and prey tightly regulate their motion, timing with precision when to hold, attack or escape. Motion cues are thus paramount in these interactions. Speed and (un)predictability have shaped the evolution of sensory and motor systems, the elucidation of which a great deal of research has been devoted. Much less attention has been paid to the role of motion as a social cue of threat or safety. We and others have found that prey animals use the movement of their neighbors to regulate their defensive responses. We have studied social regulation of freezing in rodents and found that rats use cessation of movement evoked sound, resulting from freezing, as a cue of danger. In addition, auto-conditioning, whereby rats learn the association between shock and their own freezing, during prior experience with shock, facilitates the use of freezing by others as an alarm cue. To further explore the social regulation of defensive responses we resorted to the use fruit flies as it easily allows testing of groups of varying sizes, the collection of large data sets and genetic access to individual neuronal types. We established that fruit flies in response to visual looming stimuli, simulating a large object on collision course, make rapid freeze/flee choices accompanied by lasting changes in the fly’s internal state, reflected in altered cardiac activity. Freezing in flies is also strongly modulated by the movement of surrounding neighbours. In contrast with rodents that use auditory cues, female flies use visual motion processed by visual projection neurons. Finally, I will discuss more preliminary findings suggesting that there are multiple states of freezing as measured by muscle activity in the fly legs. Having established the fly as a model to study freezing/fleeing decisions, we are in a great position to perform large scale integrative studies on the organization of defensive behaviours. Short Bio Marta Moita received her BSc degree in Biology at the University of Lisbon, in 1995. As part of Gulbenkian’s PhD programme in Biology and Medicine she developed her thesis work, on the encoding by place cells of threat conditioning under the supervision of Prof. Joseph Ledoux, at the New York University (1997-2002). In 2002, Marta Moita worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Tony Zador’s laboratory, at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, to study the role of auditory cortex in sound discrimination. In 2004, she became a principal investigator, leading the Behavioral Neuroscience lab, at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência. In 2008 her group joined the starting Champalimaud Neuroscience program. In 2018 and 2019 Marta Moita served as Deputy Director of Champalimaud Research. Her lab is primarily interested in understanding the mechanisms of behavior. To this end, the lab has focused on behaviors that are crucial for survival and present in a wide range of species, namely defensive behaviors triggered by external threats. Using a combination of state-of-the-art tools in Neuroscience (initially using rats and currently using fruit flies) and detailed quantitative descriptions of behavior, her lab aims to understand how contextual cues guide the selection between different defensive strategies and how the chosen defensive behavior and accompanying physiological responses are instantiated.    

Deciphering non-neuronal cells contribution to Alzheimer’s disease pathology using high throughput transcriptomic and proteomic methods

Lecture
Date:
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Hour: 14:00 - 15:00
Location:
Sedi Medina (PhD Thesis Defense Seminar) on Zoom

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a devastating pathology of the central nervous system (CNS) of unknown etiology which represents the most common neurodegenerative disorder. For decades, AD was perceived as a disease of the neuron alone. However, research advances in recent years have challenged this concept and shed light on the critical roles of non-neuronal cells on the development and progression of AD. In my PhD, I focused on understanding how two non-neuronal cell types - the Astrocytes and Microglia - respond to AD and how they possibly affect pathological processes. Our research identified a unique population of Astrocytes that significantly increased in association with brain pathology, which we termed disease-associated astrocytes (DAAs). This novel population of DAAs appeared at an early disease stage, increased in abundance with disease progression, and was not observed in young or in healthy adult animals. In addition, similar astrocytes appeared in aged wild-type (WT) mice and in aging human brains, suggesting their linkage to genetic and age-related factors. Aging is considered the greatest risk factor for AD, although the mechanism underlying the aging-related susceptibility to AD is unknown. One emerging factor that is involved in biological aging is the accumulation of senescent cells. Cellular senescence is a process in which aging cells change their characteristic phenotype. Under physiological conditions senescent cells can be removed by the immune system, however with aging, senescent cells accumulate in tissues, either due to a failure of effective removal or due to the accelerated formation of senescent cells. Our data highlight the contribution of non neuronal cells to AD pathogenesis by demonstrating  that 1. Overexpression of a specific gene by astrocytes affected the microglia cells' state, leading to a more homeostatic and less reactive microglial phenotype in comparison to the control group. 2. Accumulation of senescent microglia cells was observed in the brain of aged WT mice and AD mouse model (5xFAD), and by applying different therapeutic strategies we managed to observe significant quantitative differences in these cells, followed by a cognitive amelioration.

Organization of long-term behavior and individuality across developmental timescales

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
Hour: 12:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Prof. Shay Stern
|
Faculty of Biology TECHNION Haifa

Animals generate complex patterns of behavior across life that can be modified over days, months, or even years. Across these long timescales individuals within the same population may show stereotyped behaviors, but also unique behaviors that distinguish them from each other. How are long-term patterns of behavior organized and regulated across development? And what are the underlying processes that establish and modify individual-to-individual behavioral variation? By utilizing parallel long-term behavioral monitoring at high spatiotemporal resolution of multiple C. elegans individuals across their complete development time we demonstrate temporal regulation of behavioral plasticity by neuromodulators across developmental stages, structuring shared and unique individual responses to early-life experiences. I will further describe our development of unsupervised analyses of individual biases across development based on locomotion trajectory and individual postures which uncovered a large spectrum of individuality types within the isogenic populations. Lastly, I will present preliminary results suggesting that specific neuronal pathways are required to robustly synchronize long-term behavior with development time.

Molecular maps for odor processing in the mouse olfactory system

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, November 22, 2022
Hour: 12:30 - 13:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Prof. Alexander Fleischmann
|
Brown University, Providence, USA

We are interested in the organization and function of neural circuits for sensory processing and behavior. A main goal of the lab is to integrate complementary approaches of system interrogation: we study the molecular diversity of cell types, their connectivity and functional properties; we investigate network dynamics and core computational principles; and we explore how learning and experience shapes behavioral decisions. I will discuss ongoing work aimed at characterizing molecular maps for odor processing in the mouse olfactory bulb. I will present preliminary data using spatial transcriptomics to generate a comprehensive map of glomerular identity and domain structure of the olfactory bulb. Furthermore, I will discuss single cell sequencing experiments and gene regulatory network models that define the diversity and connectivity of olfactory bulb projection neurons. I will try to illustrate how the early olfactory system of mice provides an ideal model system to integrate molecular biology, functional imaging, and behavioral experiments to address fundamental questions in sensory processing and behavior.

Skeletal muscle differentiation and fusion across scales

Lecture
Date:
Wednesday, November 9, 2022
Hour: 10:00 - 11:00
Location:
Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Building for Biomedical Research
Dr. Ori Avinoam
|
Dept of Biomolecular Sciences

Selective vascular injury induces degeneration of the olfactory bulb and development of alternatives for functional olfaction

Lecture
Date:
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Hour: 11:15 - 12:15
Location:
Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Building for Biomedical Research
Dr. Tamar Licht
|
Medical Neurobiology The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The olfactory bulb is the only recipient of direct olfactory sensory input in the brain and is therefore considered indispensable for odor detection. However, some humans demonstrate normal olfaction despite OB absence. The mechanisms involved in preserving olfaction and the pathogenesis leading to this condition are unknown. We use a mouse model mimicking vascular injury typical of the premature brain. We mapped maturation of blood vessels during development and found selective vulnerability of olfactory bulb vasculature during a specific developmental stage. This injury led to the development of adult, healthy mice with 5% - 35% of the original OB size. Mice could perform innate and learned olfactory tasks, and odor-specific sniff-locked responses were recorded from Piriform cortex. Anatomically, olfactory sensory neurons connect to the rudimentary OB and other ectopic regions and lose typical glomerular convergence. Accordingly, mitral/tufted apical dendrite extends beyond the territory of a single glomerulus. These and additional anatomical findings present alternative nose-to-brain connectivity may underlie preservation of olfaction in humans with degenerated olfactory bulbs.

Mapping internal representations with adaptive sampling, massive online experiments and cross-cultural research

Lecture
Date:
Monday, October 24, 2022
Hour: 11:00 - 12:00
Location:
Nella and Leon Benoziyo Building for Biological Sciences
Dr. Nori Jacoby
|
Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt Research Group Leader, “Computational Auditory Perception”

Our brain relies on internal representations to support perception, action, and decision-making. Internal representations are usually rich, multidimensional, and cannot be directly observed. How can these internal representations be characterized? How are they affected by experience? My work develops adaptive behavioral paradigms that integrate human decisions into computer algorithms via human-in-the-loop experiments. I combine these paradigms with a data-intensive expansion of the scale and scope of behavioral research by means of massive online experiments and cross-cultural comparative research. This talk presents “adaptive sampling,” a type of experimental paradigm inspired by Monte Carlo Markov Chain techniques. Each successive stimulus depends on a subject's response to the previous stimulus. This process allows us to sample from the complex and high-dimensional joint distribution associated with internal representations and obtain high-resolution maps of perceptual spaces. After introducing these methods and describing their implementation via large-scale online experiments and field experiments around the world, I demonstrate how they can be applied to fundamental questions in the understanding of the human mind. Specifically, I examine how biology and culture influence internal representations and how semantics influence perception.

Limb development: old equation new solution

Lecture
Date:
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Hour: 10:00 - 11:00
Location:
Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Building for Biomedical Research
Prof. Eli Zelzer
|
Dept of Molecular Genetics, WIS

Pages

All events, All years

Latent cause inference in learning and decision making

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, January 3, 2023
Hour: 12:30 - 13:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Prof. Yael Niv
|
Neuroscience Institute and Psychology Department Princeton University

No two events are alike. But still, we learn, which means that we implicitly decide what events are similar enough that experience with one can inform us about what to do in another. We have suggested that this relies on parsing of incoming information into “clusters” according to inferred hidden (latent) causes. In this talk, I will present a computational model of this latent-cause inference process, and show supporting data from a variety of behavioral experiments in humans and rodents spanning from simple conditioning to memory to social decision making. I will also briefly discuss the relevance of this theory to mental health treatments.

Renewal and plasticity in oral and gastrointestinal epithelia

Lecture
Date:
Monday, January 2, 2023
Hour: 11:15 - 12:15
Location:
Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Building for Biomedical Research
Prof. Ophir Klein
|
Executive Director of Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children's Vice Dean for Children’s Services David and Meredith Kaplan Distinguished Chair in Children’s Health Professor of Orofacial Sciences and Pediatrics, UC San Francisco

How movement regulates defensive behaviours in a social context

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
Hour: 12:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Prof. Marta Moita
|
Behavioural Neuroscience Champalimaud Center, Lisbon

Our work concerns the general problem of adaptive behavior in response to predatory threats, and of the neural mechanisms underlying a choice between strategies. Interacting predators and prey tightly regulate their motion, timing with precision when to hold, attack or escape. Motion cues are thus paramount in these interactions. Speed and (un)predictability have shaped the evolution of sensory and motor systems, the elucidation of which a great deal of research has been devoted. Much less attention has been paid to the role of motion as a social cue of threat or safety. We and others have found that prey animals use the movement of their neighbors to regulate their defensive responses. We have studied social regulation of freezing in rodents and found that rats use cessation of movement evoked sound, resulting from freezing, as a cue of danger. In addition, auto-conditioning, whereby rats learn the association between shock and their own freezing, during prior experience with shock, facilitates the use of freezing by others as an alarm cue. To further explore the social regulation of defensive responses we resorted to the use fruit flies as it easily allows testing of groups of varying sizes, the collection of large data sets and genetic access to individual neuronal types. We established that fruit flies in response to visual looming stimuli, simulating a large object on collision course, make rapid freeze/flee choices accompanied by lasting changes in the fly’s internal state, reflected in altered cardiac activity. Freezing in flies is also strongly modulated by the movement of surrounding neighbours. In contrast with rodents that use auditory cues, female flies use visual motion processed by visual projection neurons. Finally, I will discuss more preliminary findings suggesting that there are multiple states of freezing as measured by muscle activity in the fly legs. Having established the fly as a model to study freezing/fleeing decisions, we are in a great position to perform large scale integrative studies on the organization of defensive behaviours. Short Bio Marta Moita received her BSc degree in Biology at the University of Lisbon, in 1995. As part of Gulbenkian’s PhD programme in Biology and Medicine she developed her thesis work, on the encoding by place cells of threat conditioning under the supervision of Prof. Joseph Ledoux, at the New York University (1997-2002). In 2002, Marta Moita worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Tony Zador’s laboratory, at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, to study the role of auditory cortex in sound discrimination. In 2004, she became a principal investigator, leading the Behavioral Neuroscience lab, at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência. In 2008 her group joined the starting Champalimaud Neuroscience program. In 2018 and 2019 Marta Moita served as Deputy Director of Champalimaud Research. Her lab is primarily interested in understanding the mechanisms of behavior. To this end, the lab has focused on behaviors that are crucial for survival and present in a wide range of species, namely defensive behaviors triggered by external threats. Using a combination of state-of-the-art tools in Neuroscience (initially using rats and currently using fruit flies) and detailed quantitative descriptions of behavior, her lab aims to understand how contextual cues guide the selection between different defensive strategies and how the chosen defensive behavior and accompanying physiological responses are instantiated.    

Deciphering non-neuronal cells contribution to Alzheimer’s disease pathology using high throughput transcriptomic and proteomic methods

Lecture
Date:
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Hour: 14:00 - 15:00
Location:
Sedi Medina (PhD Thesis Defense Seminar) on Zoom

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a devastating pathology of the central nervous system (CNS) of unknown etiology which represents the most common neurodegenerative disorder. For decades, AD was perceived as a disease of the neuron alone. However, research advances in recent years have challenged this concept and shed light on the critical roles of non-neuronal cells on the development and progression of AD. In my PhD, I focused on understanding how two non-neuronal cell types - the Astrocytes and Microglia - respond to AD and how they possibly affect pathological processes. Our research identified a unique population of Astrocytes that significantly increased in association with brain pathology, which we termed disease-associated astrocytes (DAAs). This novel population of DAAs appeared at an early disease stage, increased in abundance with disease progression, and was not observed in young or in healthy adult animals. In addition, similar astrocytes appeared in aged wild-type (WT) mice and in aging human brains, suggesting their linkage to genetic and age-related factors. Aging is considered the greatest risk factor for AD, although the mechanism underlying the aging-related susceptibility to AD is unknown. One emerging factor that is involved in biological aging is the accumulation of senescent cells. Cellular senescence is a process in which aging cells change their characteristic phenotype. Under physiological conditions senescent cells can be removed by the immune system, however with aging, senescent cells accumulate in tissues, either due to a failure of effective removal or due to the accelerated formation of senescent cells. Our data highlight the contribution of non neuronal cells to AD pathogenesis by demonstrating  that 1. Overexpression of a specific gene by astrocytes affected the microglia cells' state, leading to a more homeostatic and less reactive microglial phenotype in comparison to the control group. 2. Accumulation of senescent microglia cells was observed in the brain of aged WT mice and AD mouse model (5xFAD), and by applying different therapeutic strategies we managed to observe significant quantitative differences in these cells, followed by a cognitive amelioration.

Organization of long-term behavior and individuality across developmental timescales

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
Hour: 12:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Prof. Shay Stern
|
Faculty of Biology TECHNION Haifa

Animals generate complex patterns of behavior across life that can be modified over days, months, or even years. Across these long timescales individuals within the same population may show stereotyped behaviors, but also unique behaviors that distinguish them from each other. How are long-term patterns of behavior organized and regulated across development? And what are the underlying processes that establish and modify individual-to-individual behavioral variation? By utilizing parallel long-term behavioral monitoring at high spatiotemporal resolution of multiple C. elegans individuals across their complete development time we demonstrate temporal regulation of behavioral plasticity by neuromodulators across developmental stages, structuring shared and unique individual responses to early-life experiences. I will further describe our development of unsupervised analyses of individual biases across development based on locomotion trajectory and individual postures which uncovered a large spectrum of individuality types within the isogenic populations. Lastly, I will present preliminary results suggesting that specific neuronal pathways are required to robustly synchronize long-term behavior with development time.

Molecular maps for odor processing in the mouse olfactory system

Lecture
Date:
Tuesday, November 22, 2022
Hour: 12:30 - 13:30
Location:
Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Prof. Alexander Fleischmann
|
Brown University, Providence, USA

We are interested in the organization and function of neural circuits for sensory processing and behavior. A main goal of the lab is to integrate complementary approaches of system interrogation: we study the molecular diversity of cell types, their connectivity and functional properties; we investigate network dynamics and core computational principles; and we explore how learning and experience shapes behavioral decisions. I will discuss ongoing work aimed at characterizing molecular maps for odor processing in the mouse olfactory bulb. I will present preliminary data using spatial transcriptomics to generate a comprehensive map of glomerular identity and domain structure of the olfactory bulb. Furthermore, I will discuss single cell sequencing experiments and gene regulatory network models that define the diversity and connectivity of olfactory bulb projection neurons. I will try to illustrate how the early olfactory system of mice provides an ideal model system to integrate molecular biology, functional imaging, and behavioral experiments to address fundamental questions in sensory processing and behavior.

Skeletal muscle differentiation and fusion across scales

Lecture
Date:
Wednesday, November 9, 2022
Hour: 10:00 - 11:00
Location:
Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Building for Biomedical Research
Dr. Ori Avinoam
|
Dept of Biomolecular Sciences

Selective vascular injury induces degeneration of the olfactory bulb and development of alternatives for functional olfaction

Lecture
Date:
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Hour: 11:15 - 12:15
Location:
Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Building for Biomedical Research
Dr. Tamar Licht
|
Medical Neurobiology The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The olfactory bulb is the only recipient of direct olfactory sensory input in the brain and is therefore considered indispensable for odor detection. However, some humans demonstrate normal olfaction despite OB absence. The mechanisms involved in preserving olfaction and the pathogenesis leading to this condition are unknown. We use a mouse model mimicking vascular injury typical of the premature brain. We mapped maturation of blood vessels during development and found selective vulnerability of olfactory bulb vasculature during a specific developmental stage. This injury led to the development of adult, healthy mice with 5% - 35% of the original OB size. Mice could perform innate and learned olfactory tasks, and odor-specific sniff-locked responses were recorded from Piriform cortex. Anatomically, olfactory sensory neurons connect to the rudimentary OB and other ectopic regions and lose typical glomerular convergence. Accordingly, mitral/tufted apical dendrite extends beyond the territory of a single glomerulus. These and additional anatomical findings present alternative nose-to-brain connectivity may underlie preservation of olfaction in humans with degenerated olfactory bulbs.

Mapping internal representations with adaptive sampling, massive online experiments and cross-cultural research

Lecture
Date:
Monday, October 24, 2022
Hour: 11:00 - 12:00
Location:
Nella and Leon Benoziyo Building for Biological Sciences
Dr. Nori Jacoby
|
Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt Research Group Leader, “Computational Auditory Perception”

Our brain relies on internal representations to support perception, action, and decision-making. Internal representations are usually rich, multidimensional, and cannot be directly observed. How can these internal representations be characterized? How are they affected by experience? My work develops adaptive behavioral paradigms that integrate human decisions into computer algorithms via human-in-the-loop experiments. I combine these paradigms with a data-intensive expansion of the scale and scope of behavioral research by means of massive online experiments and cross-cultural comparative research. This talk presents “adaptive sampling,” a type of experimental paradigm inspired by Monte Carlo Markov Chain techniques. Each successive stimulus depends on a subject's response to the previous stimulus. This process allows us to sample from the complex and high-dimensional joint distribution associated with internal representations and obtain high-resolution maps of perceptual spaces. After introducing these methods and describing their implementation via large-scale online experiments and field experiments around the world, I demonstrate how they can be applied to fundamental questions in the understanding of the human mind. Specifically, I examine how biology and culture influence internal representations and how semantics influence perception.

Limb development: old equation new solution

Lecture
Date:
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Hour: 10:00 - 11:00
Location:
Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Building for Biomedical Research
Prof. Eli Zelzer
|
Dept of Molecular Genetics, WIS

Pages

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