לוח שנה משולב

The hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, two brain regions frequently implicated in psychiatric illness, must cooperate to regulate both cognitive and emotional behaviors. We and others have shown that these two brain regions synchronize their activity during behavior. I will discuss the dynamics of this synchrony during working memory and anxiety, how it shapes neuronal responses in the prefrontal cortex, and how it is altered by genetic manipulations of relevance to psychiatric disease.

Abstract:

Ion-conducting materials with quite different kinds of disordered structures have been found to show an unexpected degree of similarity in their broadband conductivity spectra. In particular, two surprising "universalities" have been detected. One of them, the "first universality", is a fingerprint of activated hopping along interconnected sites, while the other, the "second universality", reflects non-activated, strictly localised movements of the ions. The former is observed at sufficiently high temperatures, while the other is found at sufficiently low ones, e.g., in the cryogenic temperature regime. In either case, rate equations have been found that reproduce the relevant time dependence of the ion dynamics as well as the spectra themselves. Therefore, these equations may be regarded as manifestations of the underlying common laws. At the same time, they also form a sound basis for understanding and visualising the phenomena in terms of simple physical pictures.

Finding new ways and improving old ways for energy conversion are a necessity if we are to face the future global energy challenges. One of the most promising and fascinating channels for achieving these goals is the use of nano-scale junctions for energy conversion, for example by utilizing thermo-electric effects. Understanding the processes that affect the energy transport and conversion at the nano-scale are thus a necessary mile-stone, and form a great challenge, both experimentally and theoretically. In this talk I review some recent advances in the theory of energy transport and conversion in nano-junctions. I describe several novel theories which have been developed for studying thermo-electric effects in nano-junctions, temperature distributions, energy transport in DNA nano-junctions, and energy to magnetization current conversion. These theories can be used to study basic physical phenomena (for instance local temperature fluctuations, the onset of Fourier’s law, DNA denaturation etc.) and can also lead to novel concepts and devices for energy transport and conversion such as thermal switches and thermal diodes.