Brain

Darren Schreiber, PhD
2024-05-03 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | 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

35th Annual Southern California Alzheimer’s Disease Research Conference
2024-09-06 08:00 - 15:15 | Hilton Irvine and Virtual, 18800 MacArthur Blvd, Irvine, CA, 92612, United States
Register for the 35th Annual Southern California Alzheimer’s Disease Research Conference, Advances in Dementia Care, hosted by the UCI Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders (UCI MIND) in partnership with Alzheimer’s Orange County and Alzheimer’s Association Orange County. This year the conference will examine the important advances being made in the diagnosis, treatment, and care for people living with dementia. Topics will include genetic testing, blood tests, disease modifying therapies, treatments for behavioral symptoms, equity and access, the rise of pseudomedicine, and care navigator programs.

Jing Zhang, PhD
2024-09-10 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. Jing Zhang, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of California, Irvine.

Benjamin Gunn, PhD
2024-09-19 10:30 - 11:30 | Plumwood House, 1003 Health Sciences Rd, Irvine, CA 92617, Irvine, CA, 92697, United States
The Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology seminar will host guest speaker Dr. Benjamin Gunn, Project Scientist at University of California, Irvine
An analysis of the primary hippocampal circuit implications and applications
Despite intense interest in hippocampal contributions to behavior, surprisingly little is known about how cortical signals are processed across even the basic multi-stage circuit. Here, I will describe the first input/output relationship for the primary hippocampal circuit. Results identify a novel role for recurrent CA3 activity in driving throughput that challenges the notion of the tri-synaptic circuit, while the presence of low pass filters dictates the nature of effective input frequencies and patterns. Although the simplest circuit operation, signal throughput is critical for the execution of more complex processes required for hippocampus-dependent memory processing — how these findings place constraints upon circuit performance and the potential for different operational states will be discussed. These findings open the way to novel analyses of how the hippocampus and its contributions to behavior may be influenced in physiological and pathophysiological states. In this regard, I will provide evidence for alterations in hippocampal circuit function following single-housing that are associated with deficits in cognitive function and other behaviors associated with depression.

Wei-Chung Lee, PhD
2024-09-24 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. Wei-Chung Lee, Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard University.
“Circuit Motifs of Sensorimotor Integration”

Neuronal circuits transform sensory information into behavior. I will present our recent work to understand the neuronal circuit basis of decision making and motor control. First, we studied synaptic connectivity underlying choice-selective activity in the mouse posterior parietal cortex (PPC) during a perceptual decision-making task. Using a combination of virtual-reality behavior, two-photon calcium imaging, connectomics, and circuit modeling, we analyzed how synaptic connections between PPC neurons relate to their function. Our results provide evidence for how synaptic connectivity in cortical circuits supports a learned decision-making task. Second, we examined the wiring logic of premotor circuits controlling the Drosophila leg and wing. Using connectomics, we found that premotor networks organize into modules linking motor neurons innervating muscles with related functions. By comparing the architectures of leg and wing motor control systems within the same animal, we identified common principles of premotor network organization and specialized features reflecting the biomechanical constraints and evolutionary origins of these motor control systems.

2024 Second Annual Symposium for the Center for Neurotherapeutics
2024-10-04 08:00 - 18:00 | Samueli Integrative Health Institute Sue Gross Auditorium, 856 Health Sciences Quad, Irvine, 92697, United States
The purpose of the Symposium will be to familiarize attendees with the UCI Center for
Neurotherapeutics and introduce attendees to the exciting translational
neuroscience research happening right on our campus and in labs across the country. We
hope that attendees will:

Learn about the vision that drives us at the UCI Center for Neurotherapeutics and our
ongoing effort to advance drug development on campus.
Become acquainted with cutting-edge approaches being applied to develop innovative
models and novel therapeutic solutions for neurological diseases. Lecture topics will
include drug discovery and high-throughput screening methods to identify rational
drug targets. Experts from diverse disciplines will explain how they are tackling the
challenge of delivering small molecules and biological agents across the blood-brain
barrier.
Appreciate the many opportunities for cross-disciplinary interaction and collaboration
in this field. Our number one core value at the UCI Center for Neurotherapeutics is to
promote collaboration across campus, especially between faculty in the physical
sciences and the biological sciences. We believe that only by combining such multi-
disciplinary expertise and diverse perspectives will it be possible to unlock new
avenues of discovery and accelerate progress toward developing meaningful solutions
for therapy development.

Our exceptional line-up of guest speakers and UCI faculty speakers include:

Anabella Villalobos (Biogen); Neurological/Rare Disease Therapies
Donna Huryn (University of Pennsylvania); Academic Drug Discovery Challenges
Ethan Lippmann (Vanderbilt); siRNA Brain Delivery via Albumin
Su Guo (UC San Francisco); GPCR Targeting in Parkinson’s
Hang Lu (Georgia Tech); Microtechnology & AI in Drug Screening
Errol Arkilic (UC Irvine); Beall Applied Innovation
Leslie Thompson (UC Irvine); Huntington’s Disease Treatment Advances
Jennifer Prescher (UC Irvine); Nature-Inspired Imaging Tools
Christopher Hughes (UC Irvine); Blood-Brain Barrier Neurovascular Model
Melanie Cocco (UC Irvine); Voxelotor for Red Blood Cell Modulation

Whether you are a student, postdoctoral trainee, faculty member, or staff member, we
encourage you to join us, so please mark your calendars!
Registration is free!
Please register by Friday, September 27, 2024.

Masakazu Agetsuma, Ph.D.
2024-10-11 13:00 - 17:00 | Plumwood House Room 166, 1003 Health Sciences Rd, Irvine, CA 92617, Irvine, CA, 92697-3800, United States
The Center for Neural Circuit Mapping will host guest speaker Dr. Masakazu Agetsuma, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Japan
“Activity-dependent organization of prefrontal hub-networks for associative learning and signal transformation”
Associative learning is crucial for adapting to environmental changes. Interactions among neuronal populations involving the dorso-medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) in rodents are proposed to regulate associative memory. Although neural network remodeling is generally believed to underlie learning and memory, how this process occurs to store and process associative memory remains one of the most critical open questions in the field. To tackle this question, we developed a pipeline for longitudinal two-photon imaging and mathematical dissection of neural population activities in mouse dmPFC during fear-conditioning procedures, enabling us to detect learning-dependent changes in the dmPFC information coding and network topology. After confirming that the dmPFC contributes to the expression of the conditioned responses (CR) by chemogenetic silencing, we recorded neural population activities and analyzed them by regularized regression methods and graphical modeling. We found that fear conditioning drove dmPFC reorganization to generate a neuronal ensemble encoding CR, which was characterized by enhanced internal coactivity and functional connectivity. Importantly, neurons strongly responding to unconditioned stimuli during fear conditioning subsequently became hubs of this novel network and revealed enhanced association with conditioned stimuli (CS) specifically in the CR ensemble, which may work as an information-processing neural network implementing CS-triggered CR. Altogether, we demonstrate learning-dependent dynamic modulation of population coding structured on the activity-dependent formation of the hub network within the dmPFC. features reflecting the biomechanical constraints and evolutionary origins of these motor control systems.”

Vahid Yaghmai, MD, MS, FSAR
2024-10-15 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. Vahid Yaghmai, Professor and Chair in the Department of Radiological Sciences, University of California, Irvine
“Medical Imaging Research: From Bench to Bedside”

Current areas of basic and clinical research in Radiological Sciences department will be highlighted. An overview of resources in the preclinical and clinical settings will be provided. Clinical examples that highlight the state-of-the-art medical imaging technology available in Radiological Sciences will also be discussed.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ph.D.
2024-10-16 19:30 - 20:30 | Irvine Barclay Theater, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine, CA, 92612, United States
The McGaugh-Gerard Lecture on Learning and Memory will host guest speaker Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University.
Three Lessons About the Brain

Ever wonder how your brain really works? Join us for the 3rd Annual McGaugh-Gerard Lecture on Learning and Memory by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, an author and expert in psychology and neuroscience, as she breaks down three key ideas about the brain’s inner workings. In this talk, you’ll learn:

How your brain’s most important job is keeping your body running smoothly.
How your brain is constantly predicting what will happen next rather than reacting to the world.
How feeling and thinking and even seeing follow from your brain’s plan for action; your brain prepares your behavior first and creates your lived experience in the process.

Dr. Barrett will show how these brain functions affect how you feel, how you think, and what you do.

Jack Gallant, Ph.D.
2024-10-18 08:30 - 10:00 | Sue Gross Auditorium, 854 Health Sciences Rd, Irvine, 92617, United States
UCI Center for Translational Vision Research will host guest speaker Dr. Jack Gallant, a professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Co-director of the Brain Imaging Center (BIC), from the University of California, Berkeley
A biologically plausible hierarchical convolutional energy model explains V4 responses during natural vision

Daniele Canzio, PhD
2024-10-22 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. Daniele Canzio, Assistant Professor of Neurology at the Weill Institute for Neurosciences, University of California, San Francisco.
How do neurons recognize self from non-self?
My lab investigates how neurons distinguish self from non-self, a process also known as neural self-avoidance. This process is critical for the establishment of neural wiring patterns during development. We are particularly interested in the role of genome architecture and epigenetic gene silencing in the generation of the transcriptional diversity underlying the process of neural self-avoidance in the mammalian brain.

Marcus Holmes, Ph.D.
2024-10-22 16:00 - 17:00 | CNLM Herklotz Conference Center and Virtually via Zoom
UCI Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, UCI Brain, and UCI Conte Center will host guest speaker Dr. Marcus Holmes, Professor of Government, Chair of the Department of Government, Director of the Political Psychology and International Relations Lab, and Co-Director of the Social Science Research Methods Center from The College of William and Mary.
The Social Neuroscience Behind Face-to-Face Diplomacy?

Albert La Spada, M.D., Ph.D.
2024-10-23 16:00 - 18:00 | Crystal Cove Auditorium at the UCI Student Center, 4113 Pereira Dr, Irvine, CA, 92697-3800, United States
The Charlie Dunlop School of Biological Sciences will host guest speaker Albert La Spada, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of Pathology, from the University of California, Irvine, for the Dean’s Distinguished Lecture.
Defining the Mechanistic Basis of Neurodegenerative Proteinopathy: A 35 Year Genetic Odyssey

Yannick Fotio, PharmD, Ph.D.
2024-10-24 10:30 - 11:30 | Plumwood House Room 166, 1003 Health Sciences Rd, Irvine, CA 92617, Irvine, CA, 92697-3800, United States
The Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology will host Yannick Fotio, PharmD, Ph.D. a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Piomelli’s lab from the University of California, Irvine.
Metabolic reprogramming drives pain chronification after tissue damage
