2024/25 Neuroscience Research Colloquium Schedule

FALL 2024

SEPTEMBER 20

  • Host: Dr. Kota Mizumoto
  • Speaker: Dr. Peri Kurshan, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
  • Title: Protein-lipid interactions drive presynaptic assembly prior to cell-adhesion molecule recruitment
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  • Meeting ID: 91512 289258
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Our lab uses C. elegans to study the molecular mechanisms of synapse development, focusing on how presynaptic proteins such as neurexins and active zone scaffold molecules interact and assemble. We have found a surprising role for protein-lipid interactions early in the process of synapse assembly. We also use C. elegans to model human patient mutations in presynaptic calcium channels to gain a better understanding of how and why these mutations lead to varied patient manifestations.

SEPTEMBER 27

  • Host: Dr. Shernaz Bamji
  • Speaker: Dr. Katharine Smith, University of Colorado, Denver
  • Title: Illuminating mechanisms of inhibitory synapse function and plasticity
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  • Meeting ID: 91512 289258
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The Smith lab investigates the molecular mechanisms that underly synaptic inhibition, its plasticity and how it is disrupted in disease. We use advanced microscopy techniques like super-resolution microscopy to analyze the fine details of the synapse, and link these findings to synapse function and diversity, therefore providing a new logic to synaptic inhibition.

OCTOBER 18

  • Host: Drs. Cheryl Wellington and Paul Van Donkelaar
  • Speaker: Dr. Carrie Esopenko, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
  • Title: Intimate Partner Violence-Brain Injury: What We Know and How Can We help?
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  • Meeting ID: 91512 289258
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Dr. Carrie Esopenko is an Associate Professor in the Brain Injury Research Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. She is also holds an adjunct faculty appointment at the Traumatic Brain Injury and Concussion Center at the University of Utah, as well as in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at Rutgers – Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. She is the principal investigator of a National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke R01-funded multi-site study examining the psychological, cognitive, and neural signatures of IPV-related head trauma. She is the Lead Investigator of the ENIGMA Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Working Group seeking to increase IPV brain injury research collaborations worldwide, and co-leads ENIGMA Global Knowledge Exchange Network which seeks to provide education and training supports to service providers and advocates working with IPV-related brain injury. Her research focuses on understanding the effects of neurotrauma and mental health conditions across populations, and identifying methods for injury prevention and patient-specific and community-based intervention strategies.

OCTOBER 25

  • Host: Dr. Mark Cembrowski
  • Speaker: Dr. Catherine Peña, Princeton University
  • Title: Early life stress primes sensitivity to future stress: from engrams to epigenetics
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  • Meeting ID: 91512 289258
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Early life stress increases sensitivity to stress later in life, which may be at the root of increased risk for mental health disorders. Our work seeks to understand the mechanistic underpinnings of this heightened stress sensitivity. Using transgenic mice to label and capture experience-actiated neurons, we show that neurons active during early life stress are more likely to be reactivated during adult stress experience, and that chemogenetically inhibiting these neurons rescues behavioral changes. Heightened cellular reactivity may be due to long-lasting changes in the epigenome that leave chromatin more open and transcriptionally reactive to additional stimuli, particularly in stress-activated neurons. Together, this work supports a biological model in which stress alters chromatin development, leading to increased cellular reactivity and ultimately behavioral sensitivity to future stress.

NOVEMBER 1

  • Host: Dr. Lynn Raymond
  • Speaker: Dr. Edmund Au, Columbia University
  • Title: Elucidating Principles of Cortical Interneuron Synaptic Organization
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  • Meeting ID: 91512 289258
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Cortical interneurons are the most transcriptionally and morphologically diverse neurons in the brain, characterized in part by their striking degree of synaptic specificity. However, little is known about the extent of their synaptic diversity due to the lack of unbiased methods to extract features of synaptic organization among interneuron subtypes. In this talk, I will introduce an approach we developed that combines imaging and computational extraction of synaptic features from genetically-identified interneuron synapses and their subcellular specificity among postsynaptic targets. A machine-learning approach (1) reveals hundreds of spatial and structural features from each analyzed synapse, (2) constructs a multidimensional data set, consisting of millions of synapses, and (3) uncovers novel synaptic subgroups. By analyzing this dataset, we found that dendrite-targeting synaptic subgroups were clustered onto distinct subdomains of the dendrite along the proximal to distal axis; Soma-targeting subgroups were enriched onto different postsynaptic cell types; Finally, the two main subclasses of interneurons, basket cells and somatostatin interneurons, utilize distinct strategies to enact inhibitory synaptic coverage. Thus, we uncover previously unknown structural and topological features of inhibitory synaptic organization and establishes a conceptual framework for studying inhibitory synaptic diversity in health and disease.

NOVEMBER 15

  • Host: Michael Gordon
  • Speaker: Dr. Anna Phan, University of Alberta
  • Title: How social isolation impairs learning
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  • Meeting ID: 91512 289258
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Social isolation and loneliness has been on the rise for the last 20yrs. Many studies have linked increased rates of isolation and loneliness to dementia, depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders, but how isolation affects the brain to alter behaviors is unknown. Here, we focus on how isolation impairs learning and memory in the model organism Drosophila. We’ve found that isolation impairs learning and reduces synaptic proteins in the brains of fruit flies. This appears to cause alterations to their neural circuitry  that impairs learning by reducing the capacity for synaptic plasticity.

NOVEMBER 22

  • Host: Dr. Todd Woodward
  • Speaker: Dr. Sepideh Sadaghiani, University of Illinois
  • Title: The connectome multiplex
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  • Meeting ID: 91512 289258
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The human functional connectome has become synonymous with its fMRI heritage, which yields connectivity on the basis of extremely slow fluctuations of the hemodynamic signal. Recently however, these slow connectivity patterns have been complemented with fast connectivity from electrophysiological measures. In this talk, I will discuss synergistic investigations of the functional connectome that use multiple complimentary acquisition methods. This multi-modal approach has demonstrated that the connectome comprises both fast, oscillation-based connectivity observable in EEG, and extremely slow connectivity best captured with fMRI. While the fast and slow processes share spatial organization, these processes unfold in a temporally independent manner. Our findings suggest that equivalent dynamics are engaged across all timescales, but at different speeds. Infraslow and rapid connectivity of various frequency bands can thus be conceptualized as a multiplex of concurrent trajectories through a shared space of discrete connectome states. In conclusion, basic and translational research will benefit from comprehensively considering the full breadth of the functional connectome’s timescales.

NOVEMBER 29

  • Host: Dr. Tim Murphy
  • Speaker: Dr. Paul Frankland, University of Toronto
  • Title: The ontogeny of hippocampus-dependent memory
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  • Meeting ID: 91512 289258
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Memories for events (i.e., episodic memories) formed in early development differ from those in adulthood in at least two regards. First, these memories tend to be rapidly forgotten (i.e., infantile amnesia). Second, they tend to be less precise than those formed in adulthood (i.e., infantile generalization). My talk will focus on the neurobiological mechanisms that account for these different operating characteristics of episodic memory in the developing brain. With respect to infantile amnesia, we have shown that maturation of cortical circuits is necessary for the formation of enduring event memories. With respect to infantile generalization, our studies reveal that maturation of inhibitory microcircuits in the hippocampus are necessary for the formation of adult-like, precise memories for events.

DECEMBER 6  

  • Host: Dr. Shernaz Bamji
  • Speaker: Dr. Fergil Mills, University of Utah
  • Title: Novel amygdalostriatal circuits for valence and fear
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  • Meeting ID: 91512 289258
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The amygdalostrital transition zone (ASt) is situated at a crossroads between the amygdala and striatum, but its role in motivated behaviors is poorly understood. We have explored the functional role and genetic identity of this structure, and found the first evidence that the ASt encodes negative valence across behavioral timescales and is essential for orchestrating behavioral fear responses.

TERM 2

(WINTER 2025)

JANUARY 10

  • Host:  Dr. Jason Snyder
  • Speaker: Dr. Cheryl Wellington, UBC
  • Title: New CFI funded Core Facility

Dr. Wellington will be introducing a new CFI funded Core Facility that will focus on fluid biomarkers relevant to clinical neurology and fundamental neuroscience.

JANUARY 17 

  • Host: Dr. Michael Kobor
  • Speaker: Dr. Ami Citri, Centre for Brain Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  • Title: New Behavioral Analysis Tools Elucidate Neural Circuits for Spontaneous Actions

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 actions in freely-behaving mice. Our results support a significant revision of the canonical model of the role of the basal ganglia in action selection.

JANUARY 24

  • Host:  Dr. Doug Altshuler
  • Speaker: Dr. Florian Engert, Harvard University
  • Title: Focus versus Competence: Attentional Switching in Larval Zebrafish

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 is high and fish consistently turn into the direction of the coherent motion, and a second, disengaged state, where performance drops to chance. We find that a simple HMM is sufficient to model these transitions and fits our experimental data well. We find that this addition can be incorporated into an existing DDM framework that has previously been used to model perceptual decision making in larval zebrafish. Further, we leverage the large behavioral data sets to fit a mixture model of performance distributions and extract two latent variables which we term ‘focus’ and ‘competence’. Whereas ‘competence’ quantifies performance while the fish is in the engaged state, the ‘focus’ variable captures the relative duration for which each animal persists in the engaged state. We show that ‘focus’ may be largely inherited from the parents, while ‘competence’ is more likely to be influenced by environmental context. This quantitative framework for analyzing decision making can be used to screen genetic perturbations for their impact on these two aspects of performance, and potentially help to identify a genetic basis, and a neural mechanism for attention, that extends across organisms.

JANUARY 31

  • Host: Dr. Jason Snyder
  • Speaker: UBC Kickstart Updates
  • Speakers:
  • Dr. Hee Yeon Im:  Combining MEG and fMRI for multimodal functional neuroimaging in pediatric brain research.
  • Dr. Mark Cembrowski:  Applying spatial  transcriptomics to the human brain.

FEBRUARY 7

  • Host: Dr. Jason Snyder
  • Speaker: UBC Kickstart Updates
  • Speakers:
  • Dr. Douglas Altshuler:  Eye movements during complex locomotion.
  • Dr. Christian Schütz:  Advanced virtual application for treatment and rehabilitation (AVATAR) of patients with severe mental health and substance use disorders.
  • Dr. Manu Madhav: Decoding the neural basis of contextual action in navigation.

FEBRUARY 14

  • Host: Dr. Annie Ciernia
  • Speaker: Dr. Dorothy Schafer, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School
  • Title: TBD

FEBRUARY 21

  • Host: Dr. Shernaz Bamji
  • Speaker: Dr. Caroline Menard, Laval University
  • Title:  Neurovascular adaptations underlie stress vulnerability vs resilience in mice and human depression

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 samples. We showed that chronic stress exposure promotes blood-brain barrier hyperpermeability leading to passage of circulating inflammatory mediators into the brain and the establishment of depressive behaviors. These changes occur in a sex-specific manner which may contribute to sex differences in depression prevalence, symptoms and treatment responses.

FEBRUARY 28

  • Host: Dr. Amani Hariri
  • Speaker:  Dr. Boris Heiftes, Stanford University
  • Title: TBD

MARCH 7

  • Host: Lily Aleksandrova
  • Speaker: Dr. Alex Kwan, Cornell University
  • Title: Making synapses with psychedelics

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, I will describe a series of studies from my lab aimed at understanding the mechanism of action of psilocybin, using subcellular-resolution two-photon imaging, in vivo electrophysiology, rabies viral tracing, and other molecular and behavioral approaches in mice. The results provide insights into the drug action of psychedelics on neural circuits.

MARCH 14

  • Host: Dr. Michael Gordon
  • Speaker: Dr. Anita Devineni, Emory University
  • Title: TBD

MARCH 21

  • Host: Dr. Khaled Abdelrahman
  • Speaker: Dr. Graham Collingridge, University of Toronto
  • Title: Glutamate receptors and synaptic plasticity in health and disease.

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 the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus and how this information is being used to understand the molecular basis of, and to develop treatments for, a wide variety of brain disorders.  In this respect, I will summarise some of our recent work in the areas of neurodevelopmental, psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases.

MARCH 28

  • Host: Dr. Lynn Raymond
  • Speaker: Dr. Anne Churchland, UCLA
  • Title: TBD

APRIL 4

  • Host: Dr. Michael Gordon
  • Speaker: TBD
  • Title: TBD

APRIL 11

  • Host: Daniel Ramandi
  • Speaker: Dr. Sandeep Robert Datta, Harvard University
  • Title: TBD

APRIL 25

  • Host: Dr. Mark Cembrowski
  • Speaker: Dr. Simon Chen, University of Ottawa
  • Title: Probing the temporal dynamics of noradrenaline release at fine spatial scales during motor learning in healthy and diseased brains.

Noradrenaline (NA) is a strong modulator of neuronal activity, and many symptoms in patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can be attributed to the maladaptive activity of locus coeruleus (LC), the main source of forebrain NA; hence, it has garnered much attention as a potential lens through which to view and understand ASD. Our lab recently uncovered a role for dysregulated LC-NA function in motor learning delays in the 16p11.2 deletion mouse model of ASD (Yin et al., Nature Neuroscience 2021). We found that reduced NA levels in the primary motor cortex (M1) caused delays in motor learning and increased neuronal activity in pyramidal neurons (PNs) of M1 in 16p11.2 deletion mice. Strikingly, both the behavioral and neuronal phenotypes were rescued by chemogenetic activation of LC-NA.

In order to fully characterize the local dynamic NA levels during learning in the 16p11.2 deletion mice, we employ a newly developed optical NA sensor, GRABNE, with in vivo two-photon imaging to visualize the spatiotemporal release patterns of NA in M1 during motor learning. Intriguingly, we find that while wild-type (WT) mice exhibit consistently elevated NA levels during movements, 16p11.2 deletion mice show a delay in behaviorally induced NA increases. In addition to the delay in temporal dynamics, 16p11.2 deletion mice show altered spatial dynamics, with sparser and less behavior-specific NA release across M1 during the initial learning. In addition, we also assess the LC-NA axonal neuronal activity in M1 using in vivo Ca2+ imaging. We also observe that behavior-related activity transients are less reliable in 16p11.2 deletion mice with more unspecific activity transients during the baseline period. Intriguingly, pharmacological and closed loop optogenetic manipulations that disrupt the spatial and temporal specificity of NA release, respectively, in M1 were sufficient to induce delayed motor learning in WT mice. Our results offer new insights into the temporal dynamics of NA release at fine spatial scales within one brain region and how the specificities are critical for motor skill acquisition.

MAY 2

  • Host: Dr. Corree Laule
  • Speaker: Dr. Sarah Morrow, University of Calgary
  • Title: TBD

MAY 9

  • Host: Dr. Kota Mizumoto
  • Speaker: Dr. Julia Lefebvre, Sickkids- University of Toronto
  • Title: TBD

MAY 16

  • Host:  Daniel Ramandi
  • Speaker: Dr. Bence Olveczky – Harvard University
  • Title: TBD

MAY 23 – THERE IS NO NRC ON MAY 23 

MAY 30

  • Host: Dr. Annie Ciernia
  • Speaker: Dr. Pinar Ayata, City University of New York
  • Title: TBD

JUNE 6

  • Host: Dr. Daniela Palombo
  • Speaker: Dr. Charan Ranganath, University of California at David
  • Title: TBD

JUNE 13

  • Host: Dr. Erin MacMillan
  • Speaker: Dr. Wafaa Zaaraoui, Centre de Résonance Magnétique Biologique et Médicale, Marseille
  • Title: TBD