Brain

Presidential Leadership and Disability
2024-03-15 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom Webinar
The age of presidential candidates has become a salient concern, but age is not the only physical factor that should concern citizens. Presidents can also suffer various forms of illness, both physical and psychological. This talk highlights the nature of these concerns and how we might work to mitigate their impact on political outcomes.
Free registration is open now: https://uci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_m5HtweYgSh6t9sGnAa_hOQ#/registration
For more details, please visit: https://sites.uci.edu/centerforneuropolitics/

Anubhuti Goel, PhD
2024-03-19 10:00 - 11:00 | Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB) and Virtually Via Zoom, 419 Physical Sciences Quad, Irvine, 92697, United States
Assistant Professor of the Department of Psychology Anubhuti Goel, PhD from UC Riverside Presents:
“TBD”
Hybrid: ISEB 1200 & Zoom

Conte Center @UCI 11th Annual Symposium
2024-03-26 09:00 - 16:00 | Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences & Engineering, 100 Academy Wy, Irvine, CA, 92617, United States
11th Annual Symposium
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
9:00am – 4:00pm
The Power and Potential of Big Data and Consortia
for Studying Mental Health and Disease
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Christina Chambers, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Distinguished Professor, Department of Pediatrics
Co-Director, Center for Better Beginnings
Associate Director, Altman Clinical &
Translational Research Institute
University of California, San Diego

Christine M. Heim, PhD
Director of Institute of Medical Psychology at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin

Caroline Nievergelt, PhD
Professor,
Department of Psychiatry
University of California, San Diego
Register for the 11th Annual Symposium
Call for Abstracts and Posters

Location:
Beckman Center Of The National Academies Of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
100 Academy, Irvine, CA 92617
Registration is free.
Questions? Please reach out to James Weinstock – jweinsto@uci.edu

Xiaoyin Chen, Ph.D.
2024-04-09 10:00 - 11:00 | Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB) and Virtually Via Zoom, 419 Physical Sciences Quad, Irvine, 92697, United States
Understanding cortical organization using in situ sequencing
The UCI Center for Neural Circuit Mapping will host Xiaoyin Chen, PhD, assistant investigator of the Barcoded Connectomics Program at the Allen Institute.

Nanthia Suthana, Ph.D.
2024-04-09 11:00 - 12:00 | CNLM Herklotz Conference Center and Virtually via Zoom
Join the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (CNLM) for a hybrid event featuring Dr. Nanthia Suthana, associate professor-in-residence at the University of California, Los Angeles. This event will be held in-person in the Herklotz Conference Center and virtually via Zoom.
Unraveling Memories on the Go: Insights from Mobile Intracranial EEG Recordings in Humans

Description:
Recent technology enables the study of deep brain activity during memory phenomena in ambulatory humans navigating through real or virtual environments. Through these methods, we have shown dynamic modulation of hippocampal, entorhinal, and amygdala activity by factors like movement speed, eye movements, emotional valence and memory success. This presentation will provide an overview of these findings and explore potential clinical applications, particularly in treating neuropsychiatric disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Joshua Johansen, PhD
2024-04-11 11:00 - 12:30 | Plumwood House, 1003 Health Sciences Rd, Irvine, CA 92617, Irvine, CA, 92697, United States
The department of Anatomy & Neurobiology will host guest speaker Dr. Joshua Johansen from the RIKEN Center for Brain Science
Constructing Emotional Representations in the Brain
Description:
Innately aversive experiences profoundly alter brain processing to produce emotional states which coordinate physiological and behavioral responses and instruct memory formation. However, more complex emotions occur through an evaluation of the environment in the context of past experiences and the current physiological condition of the organism. My lab studies the neural circuits and cell coding mechanisms which translate aversive experiences into simple and complex emotional states in the brain to regulate memory formation and guide behavior. I will describe our recent work identifying a brainstem neural circuit which conveys both external-sensory and internal-motor features of innately aversive experiences to create a sensorimotor state in the amygdala for producing aversive memory formation. Contrasting with this bottom-up circuit, we’ve also found that the medial prefrontal cortex encodes more complex emotional states by building an internal associative model to perform emotional inference through top-down projections to the amygdala. These studies support a new hierarchical circuit model of emotion in which sensory, bodily and cognitive factors shape neural processing across distributed neural circuits to adaptively and flexibly control defensive responding and memory formation.

Weizhe Hong, Ph.D.
2024-04-16 10:00 - 11:00 | Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB) and Virtually Via Zoom, 419 Physical Sciences Quad, Irvine, 92697, United States
Neural Basis of Prosocial Behavior
The Center for Neural Circuit Mapping (CNCM) will host Dr. Weizhe Hong, a professor of biological chemistry and neurobiology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Semir Zeki, FMedSci, FRS
2024-04-16 11:00 - 12:00 | Zoom, Irvine, CA, 92697, United States
Join the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (CNLM) for an online event featuring Dr. Semir Zeki, professor of neuroaesthetics at University College London. This event will be held virtually via Zoom.
The science of beauty

The experience of beauty is something that we all seek and are prepared to expend considerable energy and much money in trying to acquire. But what does it entail neurobiologically? If it is a subjective experience, can it ever be measured? Are there, or can there be, any set of characteristics that render objects beautiful, irrespective of culture and upbringing?I will address these questions from a neurobiological perspective. I will show that there cannot be a single characteristic or a single set of characteristics that can render any and every object beautiful because of the way in which our brains are organized to perceive the world. I will also show that there are, in the perception of different attributes such as visual motion, faces and bodies, criteria which are not culture or education bound which can be said to enhance their beauty and to be critical to the experience of beauty when viewing them. Finally, I will show that all works that are experienced as beautiful, regardless of source (i.e. whether visual or musical or highly cognitive – as with mathematical beauty), have, as a correlate, activity in a specific part of the reward system of the emotional brain, although the neural route used to reach that part of the brain varies, depending on what is perceived. The intensity of activity there bears a quantitative relationship to the declared intensity of the experience of beauty, thus enabling us to detect and quantify the neural correlates of a subjective experience.

Robert Malenka, MD, PhD
2024-04-19 16:00 - 17:00 | Thorp Conference Center, Gross Hall 4th Floor or Telecast: Via Zoom, 845 Health Sciences Rd, Irvine, 92617, United States
“Serotonin and Sociability: From Mouse to Man”

Robert Malenka, MD, PhD
Pritzker Professor of Psychiatry and
Behavioral Sciences
Stanford University

The MSTP Distinguished Lecture Series is proud to announce the next and final speaker for the 2023-2024 academic year, Dr. Robert Malenka, Pritzker Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University​​​​​. Please see below for event registration.
Dr. Malenka’s work focuses on elucidating the mechanisms underlying the action of neurotransmitters in the mammalian brain and the molecular mechanisms by which neural circuits are reorganized by experience. His many contributions over the last 30 years have laid the groundwork for a more sophisticated understanding of the mechanisms by which neurons communicate and the adaptations in synaptic communication which underlie all behavior. He was trained as both a clinical psychiatrist and cellular neurobiologist and has been at the forefront of helping to apply the knowledge gained from basic neuroscience research to the treatment and prevention of major brain and behavior disorders.
We look forward to seeing you there!

Laura Colgin, Ph.D.
2024-04-23 11:00 - 12:00 | CNLM Herklotz Conference Center and Virtually via Zoom
CNLM Colloquium Series
Join the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (CNLM) for a hybrid event featuring Dr. Laura Colgin, professor of neuroscience at the University of Texas at Austin. This event will be held in-person in the Herklotz Conference Center and virtually via Zoom.
Hippocampal place cell responses to spatial and non-spatial information

Description:
The hippocampus is a key brain network for episodic memory. Place cells are neurons in the hippocampus that fire in specific spatial locations known as place fields. This spatially selective firing is thought to code the “where” component of episodic memory. Yet, episodic memories contain nonspatial information also. This talk will present results showing how different populations of hippocampal place cells respond to nonspatial aspects of an experience, such as social stimuli or motivational context. The results may help explain how the hippocampus integrates different aspects of an experience into a coherent episodic memory.

UCI CFAR-DS Research Seminar Series
2024-04-26 11:00 - 12:00 | Zoom, Irvine, CA, 92697, United States
The CFAR-DS Research Seminar Series hosts scientists from UC Irvine and beyond who conduct research focused on Down syndrome, including research ranging from human participants to animal models. This seminar series is intended for scientists, although all are welcome to attend. Elizabeth Fisher, PhD is Professor of Neurogenetics at the Institute of Neurology in Queen Square, University College London (UCL). She has an undergraduate degree from Oxford, and a PhD from Imperial College London. Her lab focuses on making and analyzing mouse models of neurodegeneration, including a novel humanized model of Down syndrome (trisomy 21) and humanized SOD1, FUS and TDP-43 models of ALS. Her presentation will address how humans and mice are related by just 75 million years of evolution, and scientists work with tailored mouse models to understand human genetic disorders, including Down syndrome. Dr. Fisher will show that we can understand clinical features of DS and move towards translation by working with specific mouse models.

Tian Lu, Ph.D.
2024-04-30 10:00 - 11:00 | Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB) and Virtually Via Zoom, 419 Physical Sciences Quad, Irvine, 92697, United States
Spatially resolved single-cell epigenomics and functional genomics
The Center for Neural Circuit Mapping (CNCM) will host Dr. Tian Lu, a postdoctoral fellow in chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University.

Chioma Okeoma, Ph.D.
2024-04-30 11:00 - 12:00 | Virtual via Zoom, CA
CNLM Colloquium Series
Join the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (CNLM) for a virtual event featuring Dr. Chioma Okeoma, associate professor of pathology, microbiology, and immunology at the New York Medical College. This event will be held virtually via Zoom.
Extracellular condensates – do we have to worry about them?

Darren Schreiber, PhD
2024-05-03 12:00 - 13:15 | Zoom Webinar
Join the UCI Center for Neuropolitics for their lecture with Darren Schreiber, PhD, JD, Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Exeterin.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner in 2024? How Partisan Identity Politics is Taking Over America
The past twenty years have demonstrated the role of biology in our political predispositions, with evidence from twin studies, genetics, and brain imaging. Recent trends have highlighted political polarization on an emotional, identity-driven level where the other side is seens as a hated enemy. The consequences have ranged from increasing dissatisfaction with democracy to a rise in violent extremism.

Daeyeol Lee, Ph.D.
2024-05-07 11:00 - 12:00 | CNLM Herklotz Conference Center and Virtually via Zoom
Join the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (CNLM) for a hybrid event featuring Dr. Daeyeol Lee, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of neuroscience, psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University. This event will be held in-person in the Herklotz Conference Center and virtually via Zoom.
Playing Games in the Brain

Description:
Social animals face the challenging task of predicting the actions of others. Game theory formalizes the decision making in social settings, and reinforcement learning theories can be applied to understand the cognitive processes involved in iterative social interactions. In this talk, I will review the neural correlates of such iterative learning in primate prefrontal cortex during simple competitive games, such as the rock-paper-scissors, as well as a more cognitively complex board game, such as the 4-in-a-row. The results from these experiments demonstrate the advantage of formal games in deciphering the neurocomputational mechanisms of decision making and planning.

2024 CNLM Award Ceremony
2024-05-09 11:00 - 14:00 | Irvine Improv, 527 Spectrum Center Dr, 527 Spectrum Center Dr, 92618, United States
Join the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (CNLM) for the 2024 CNLM Awards Ceremony.
The CNLM offers awards to exceptional postdoctoral researchers, graduate trainees, undergraduates students, faculty, and alumni. Student and trainee awardees will be invited to present their work in brief Elevator Pitch format to the UCI academic community and the public at our annual CNLM Awards Ceremony.

For more information, please visit: https://cnlm.uci.edu/awards/

Yin Shen, PhD
2024-05-14 10:00 - 11:00 | Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB) and Virtually Via Zoom, 419 Physical Sciences Quad, Irvine, 92697, United States
Join the UCI Center for Neural Circuit Mapping for their lecture with Yin Shen, PhD, Associate Professor in Neurology Weill Institute for Neurosciences at the University of California, San Francisco.

Samantha Butler, PhD
2024-05-16 11:00 - 12:00 | 4201 Natural Sciences II, Irvine, CA 92697, Irvine, CA, 92697, United States
“Revisiting the role(s) of netrin1 in the establishment of spinal cord circuitry.”
The department of Developmental and Cell Biology is hosting Dr Samantha Butler in their weekly seminar series. Dr Butler is the Eleanor I. Leslie Chair in Pioneering Brain Research; a professor in the UCLA Department of Neurobiology as well as the vice chair for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; a member of the UCLA Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine & Stem Cell Research, the Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities Research Center, and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Lindsay Schwarz, PhD
2024-05-21 10:00 - 11:00 | Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB) and Virtually Via Zoom, 419 Physical Sciences Quad, Irvine, 92697, United States
Join the UCI Center for Neural Circuit Mapping for their lecture with Lindsay Schwarz, PhD, Assistant Faculty at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
“Uncovering Diversity in Norepinephrine Neural Circuits”

Brad Postle, Ph.D.
2024-05-21 11:00 - 12:00 | CNLM Herklotz Conference Center and Virtually via Zoom
CNLM Colloquium Series
Controlling the Contents of Visual Working Memory
Join the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (CNLM) for a hybrid event featuring Dr. Brad Postle, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This event will be held in-person in the Herklotz Conference Center and virtually via Zoom.

Description:
Two hallmarks of working memory are flexibility — ability to mentally juggle multiple pieces of information, prioritizing what’s relevant for the task immediately at hand while also keeping potentially important but currently unprioritized information in an accessible state — and updateability — allowing for the rapid replacement of the no-longer-needed with the newly relevant. This talk will explore these two aspects of the control of working memory at the levels of algorithmic operation and neural implementation. Specifically, although parsimony holds that “deprioritization” and “removal” might be accomplished via the same mechanism, I will draw on neuroimaging (EEG and fMRI), computational (RNN, RL), and behavioral data to argue for two distinct, novel, processes for controlling the contents of WM: the transformation of representational geometries as a function of priority; and the top-down hijacking of mechanisms of adaptation to accomplish active removal. This work may generalize to broader questions, such as of how we control the moment-to-moment contents of conscious awareness, and how we diagnose and treat disorders of thought.

Mario Penzo, PhD
2024-05-21 16:00 - 17:00 | Plumwood House, 1003 Health Sciences Rd, Irvine, CA 92617, Irvine, CA, 92697, United States
Join the UCI Conte Center for their seminar with Mario Penzo, PhD, Senior Investigator and Chief of the Unit on the Neurobiology of Affective Memory at the Memory National Institute of Mental Health
The Midline Thalamus and the Control of Goal-Oriented Behaviors
The Seminar will be accessible in-person or Telecast via Zoom (pass: 764583)

EpiCenter Symposium
2024-05-22 09:00 - 15:00 | Sue Gross Auditorium, 854 Health Sciences Rd, Irvine, 92617, United States
The 2024 EpiCenter Symposium will celebrate the 20th year of the NIH T32 program in epilepsy research. Talks will feature speakers working to solve important problems related to epilepsy in the laboratory, the clinic and the community.

David Poeppel, Ph.D.
2024-05-29 12:00 - 13:00 | Virtual via Zoom, CA
The Department of Cognitive Sciences will host guest speaker Dr. David Poeppel, a Professor in the Department of Psychology from the Ernst Struengmann Institute for Neuroscience & New York University.
Speech is special and language is structured
I discuss two (older but fun and straightforward) experiments that focus on general questions about the cognitive science and neural implementation of speech and language. I come to (currently) unpopular conclusions about both domains. Based on a first set of experiments, using fMRI and exploiting the temporal statistics of speech, I argue for the existence of a speech-specific processing stage that implicates a particularneuronal substrate that has the appropriate sensitivity and selectivity for speech. Based on a second set of experiments, using MEG, I outline neural mechanisms that can form the basis for more abstract, structural processing. The results demonstrate that, during listening to connected speech, cortical activity at different time scales is entrained concurrently to track the time course of linguistic structures at different hierarchical levels. The results demonstrate constituent-driven, internal construction of hierarchical linguistic structure via entrainment of hierarchical cortical dynamics. The conclusions — that speech is special and language structure-driven — provide (by now old) neurobiological provocations to the prevailing view that speech perception is ‘mere’ hearing and that language comprehension is ‘mere’ statistics.

Bomin Sun, M.D., Ph.D.
2024-06-04 10:00 - 11:00 | Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB) and Virtually Via Zoom, 419 Physical Sciences Quad, Irvine, 92697, United States
Combined BNST and NAc stimulation for medical refractory depression: RCT and mechanism
The Center for Neural Circuit Mapping is hosting a seminar by Dr. Bomin Sun, professor of neurosurgery at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Rui Jin Hospital.

Huizhong Tao, Ph.D.
2024-06-11 10:00 - 11:00 | Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB) 1200, Irvine, CA, 92697, United States
Hypothalamic control of mood/emotion
The Center for Neural Circuit Mapping is hosting a seminar by Dr. Huizhong Tao, professor of physiology and neuroscience at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.

Johnathan Tang, Ph.D.
2024-06-13 10:00 - 11:00 | Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB) and Virtually Via Zoom, 419 Physical Sciences Quad, Irvine, 92697, United States
Integrative approaches to tackling experience-dependent outcomes
The Center for Neural Circuit Mapping is hosting a seminar by Dr. Johnathan Tang, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington.

Catherine Hartley, Ph.D.
2024-06-18 16:00 - 17:00 | CNLM Herklotz Conference Center and Virtually via Zoom
CNLM Colloquium Series
Join the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and Conte Center@UCI for a hybrid event featuring Dr. Catherine Hartley, associate professor of psychology at New York University. This event will be held in-person in the Herklotz Conference Center and virtually via Zoom.
Interactive development of reinforcement learning and episodic memory

Highlighting the fundamentally interactive nature of learning and memory, recent studies in adults have demonstrated that the same quantitative learning signals that inform value computation during reinforcement learning also modulate how information is prioritized and represented in episodic memory. While both reinforcement learning and episodic memory processes exhibit qualitative shifts from childhood to adulthood, how the interactions between these neurocognitive systems might change over development remains virtually unexplored. In this talk, I will present studies that leverage computational modeling to characterize age-related shifts in how reinforcement learning computations influence the content and granularity of memory, and how memory, in turn, informs value-based choices. I will discuss how these processes may support adaptive behavior at different developmental stages.

Dorote Lucci, Ph.D.
2024-07-09 10:00 - 11:00 | Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB) and Virtually Via Zoom, 419 Physical Sciences Quad, Irvine, 92697, United States
The Center for Neural Circuit Mapping will host guest speaker Dr. Dorote Lucci, Chair of the Global Conference on Advancing Mental Health.
Exploring the Intersection of AI, Neuroscience, and Transformative Learning: A Whole-Person Perspective from Transpersonal Psychology

UCI Conte Center Seminar Series with Debra Bangasser, PhD
2024-07-09 16:00 - 17:00 | Plumwood/Showa Denko Lecture Hall
The UCI Conte Center Seminar Series will host guest speaker Dr. Debra Bangasser, Associate Director at the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Georgia State University. Pastries and coffee will be provided.
Early resource scarcity causes lasting changes in cognition and motivated behavior

Niels Niethard PhD
2024-08-13 15:30 - 17:00 | SSPA 2112, Social Science Plaza A (SSPA) Room 2112, Irvine, CA, 92697-3800, United States
The Department of Cognitive Sciences will host guest speaker, Dr. Niels Niethard, from University of Tubingen
Sleep oscillations and synaptic plasticity: A circuit perspective
