Events

I will describe unpublished work describing the development of a new deep-learning approach for comprehensive annotation of mouse behavior directly from raw video feeds. I will further describe the use of this approach for analysis of neural activity within basal ganglia circuits for control over action selection, primarily in the context of spontaneous and compulsive […]

Decision making strategies in the face of conflicting or uncertain sensory input have been successfully described in many different species.  Here we analyze large behavioral datasets of larval zebrafish engaged in a ‘coherent dot’ optomotor assay. We find that animal performance is bimodal and can be separated into two ‘states’, an engaged state where performance […]

Our research program aims to shed light on the biological mechanisms underlying stress vulnerability vs resilience, with help of state-of-the-art photonic technology, in order to develop innovative treatments and identify biomarkers of mood disorders. Our multidisciplinary approach combines behavioral experiments to functional, cellular, molecular, and imaging studies and validation of our rodent findings in human […]

Numerous drugs have the ability to alter our perception, cognition, and mood. Some of these compounds, such as ketamine and serotonergic psychedelics, have also shown promise as treatment for mental illnesses. The behavioral effects are often long-lasting, presumably because the drugs act on synapses and dendrites to induce plasticity in the brain. In this talk, […]

Working in the laboratory of the late Hugh McLennan (Department of Physiology, UBC) Stephen Kehl and I discovered that NMDA receptors trigger the induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) in the hippocampus.  Since these early experiments, the roles of glutamate receptors and their associated signalling processes have been extensively studied.  I will provide an overview of […]