Cajal_meets_Lichtenstein_monochrome

Dutch
Neuroscience Meeting

Lunteren, The Netherlands • 11-12 June 2015

 

Main Speakers

Our main speakers this year cover an exciting array of topics. Click on the images below to learn more.

 

Chen
Alon
Chen
Stice
Eric
Stice
Pasqualetti
Massimo
Pasqualetti
Sofroniew
Nick
Sofroniew
Spencer
Sarah
Spencer
Ben-Ari
Yehezkel
Ben-Ari
de Araujo
Ivan
de Araujo

Prof. Alon Chen is a Director at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany and Professor at the Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. The collective long-term goal of Prof. Chen research is to elucidate the pathways and mechanisms, by which stress is perceived, processed, and transduced into neuroendocrine and behavioral responses under healthy and pathological conditions.

 

Alon Chen is the keynote speaker in the session Hersenstichting Lecture (11 June, 09:50) with a talk entitled The role of microRNAs in normal and pathological behaviors

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Dr. Stice served as an assistant professor and associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and has subsequently accepted a position as Senior Research Scientist at Oregon Research Institute. His research primarily focuses on identifying risk factors that predict onset of eating disorders, obesity, substance abuse, and depression, and on designing and disseminating prevention and treatment interventions for these public health problems. For example, he has found that elevated responsivity of brain reward regions to high-calorie food intake and cues, as well as a greater food reward-cue learning propensity, shows strong relations to future excessive weight gain, and further that habitual overeating leads to blunted reward region response to high-calorie food intake (echoing the tolerance observed with habitual drug use). He also developed a dissonance-based eating disorder prevention program that has been implemented with over 1 million young girls in 70 countries. He received a Career Award from the National Institutes of Health, a Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contributions to Psychopathology from the American Psychological Association, the Nan Tobler Award from the Society for Prevention Research, and the Lori Irving Award for Excellence in Eating Disorder Prevention and Awareness from the National Eating Disorders Association.

 

Eric Stice will participate in the session From brain to buffet: links between food-related brain responses and real-life eating behavior (11 June, 11:30) with a talk entitled Neural vulnerability factors that predict future weight gain: translational neuroscience implications for prevention and treatment

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Massimo Pasqualetti is since 2007 Associate professor of Cell Biology at the Department of Biology, University of Pisa. He began his career as undergraduate student at the University of Pisa studying expression of serotonergic receptors in the human brain and extraretinal photoreception in lizards. In 1997 he joined the laboratory of Filippo Rijli, initially as visiting PhD student and then as postdoctoral fellow at the Institut de Gènètique et de Biologie Molèculaire et Cellulaire (IGBMC) in Strasbourg, France. In March 1999 he received his Ph.D. in Biophysics and Molecular Biology of Cell and Development. During this period he became interested in studying the role of Hox genes in hindbrain and craniofacial development and acquired expertise in mouse molecular genetics and the use of different animal models. In 2003 he was awarded a career development award by the Italian Ministry of University and Research under the Program of “Rientro dei Cervelli” to establish his own lab at the Department of Biology, University of Pisa. Since then, Massimo focused his research interest on the study of the serotonergic system. During last years, several mouse molecular genetics tools have been developed in his lab to study the role that serotonin plays in controlling brain development and function, and to assess how altered serotonin homeostasis may contribute to the onset of neurodevelopmental disorders.

 

Massimo Pasqualetti will participate in the session Serotonin’s role in neurodevelopment (11 June, 11:30) with a talk entitled Altered serotonin homeostasis affects serotonergic neuronal circuitry

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Nicholas Sofroniew obtained his Bachelors Degree (2005-2008) and Masters Degree (2009) in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge, UK, where he specialized in Analysis and Combinatorics. He then completed his PhD in Neuroscience as part of a joint graduate program between the University of Cambridge and the Janelia Research Campus (2009-2013). He spent the first year of this program doing molecular neuroscience research using C. elegans in the lab of Howard Baylis at Cambridge, before moving to Janelia to do systems neuroscience research in the lab of Karel Svoboda. At Janelia, Nicholas developed a tactile virtual reality system for head-fixed mice, which he combined with, two-photon microscopy, optogentics, silicon probe electrophysiology, and large-scale data analysis methods to investigate information processing within neural circuits of the somatosensory cortex. His current work is directed at probing cortical processing across multiple areas during complex behavior.

 

Nick Sofroniew will participate in the session Simultaneous read-out of behavior and its neural correlates (11 June, 11:30) with a talk entitled Neural coding underlying tactile navigation

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Dr Sarah Spencer is a Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia and heads up the Perinatal Programming of Stress and Metabolism group. The early life environment is fundamentally important in dictating the type of adult we become. Stress in early life, exposure to infection, and under- or over-eating can permanently influence how we cope with stress and infection later on and how we process feeding-related signals. Dr Spencer’s research program investigates the impact of the early life environment on stress, metabolic and neuroimmune function long-term to change the way our bodies process food, stress, and challenges to the immune system, and whether these changes are permanent or reversible. Her research shows that overfeeding in early life can contribute to central inflammation that may permanently influence hypothalamic feeding and stress circuitry, leading to an increased propensity to gain weight and stay fat, hyperactive responses to stress, and an inability to appropriately respond to inflammatory challenges.  

 

Sarah Spencer will participate in the session Early-life programming of cognitive functions: a focus on the underlying mechanisms and evolutionary value (11 June, 11:30) with a talk entitled Early life overfeeding: effects on hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis function

and

Sarah Spencer will participate in the session The role of neuroimmune activation in age-associated cognitive decline (12 June, 14:00) with a talk entitled Early life overnutrition-induced neuroimmune activation and its long-term consequences for immune challenge in later life

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Dr Yehezkel Ben-Ari, is an Emeritus  Director of research at INSERM and the founder of the Institute of Neurobiology of the Mediterranean sea (INMED).  He is also CEO of Neurochlore a biotech company dedicated to understand and treat autism and related developmental disorders. His research has been centered on understanding how the brain develops and notably the roles of neuronal activity in the construction of brain networks. He has discovered develommental sequences that have been preserved throughout evolution and in particular the GABA excitatory to Inhbitory shift and the progressive formation of patterns in cortical networks including the GDPs –the first synapse driven pattern in the developing brain. In parallel, he has investigated how these sequences are deviated in disorders showing that misplaced or misconnected neurons keep immature electrical features that perturb the operation of normon functionning netwroks paving the way to novel therapeutic perspectives based ont the use of drugs that selectively block  immature currents and are inactive on adjacent normo-functionning neurons. He has illustrated recently the power of this approach showing that in autism, neurons have immature elevated intracellular chloride and excitatory GABA and a diuretic that reduces intracellualr chloride levels also attenuates the severity of autism. He is now investigating with particular emphasis the alterations that occur during delivery suggesting that delivery is a critical period in the pathogenesis fo autism and other developmental disorders. He hhas more than 500 publications and has received many awards for his investigations including the french and Belgium biomedical research prizes and the american and european academies epilepsy prizes.

 

Yehezkel Ben-Ari will participate in the session The GABA system and brain function in health and disease (11 June, 11:30) with a talk entitled Understanding brain development to treat disorders : the case of autism

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Ivan de Araújo attended the University of Brasilia, from where he received his BA (Philosophy) and MA (Mathematics) degrees. He went on to perform additional post-graduate work at the University of Edinburgh, where he studied neural network models of hippocampal function. In 2003 he completed his doctorate in the laboratory of Edmund T. Rolls at Oxford University, where he studied human brain representations of taste-odor combinations, fat perception, and thirst. He came to the USA in 2004 to perform post-doctoral work in the laboratories of Sid Simon and Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University, where he studied the responses of neuronal populations to changes in physiological state in both rats and mice. He joined the Pierce Laboratory as an Assistant Fellow in June 2007. Currently, he is an Associate professor of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine and Associate Professor of Physiology at Yale University School of Arts and Sciences. His current work focuses on the integration and sensing of sweet taste in the brain, specifically at the level of the hypothalamus, as well as the brain mechanisms of flavor preferences and nutrient sensing, especially mediated by the gut- dopaminergic system. 

 

Ivan de Araujo will participate in the session The tasty brain: new roles for taste receptors in non-gustatory organs in energy metabolism (11 June, 14:00) with a talk entitled The neural circuitry of sugar reward

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Kaplan
Barry
Kaplan
van Minnen
Jan
van Minnen
Munafò
Marcus
Munafò
Bussey
Tim
Bussey
Woo
T. Wilson
Woo
Bergles
Dwight
Bergles
Miedema
Frank
Miedema

Dr. Kaplan received his Ph.D. degree in Cell and Developmental Biology from Cornell University in 1974. After completing his postdoctoral studies at the University of Southern California, Dr. Kaplan served as a principal investigator and teacher on the faculties of the Cornell University Medical College and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Prior to joining the National Institute of Mental Health as Director of Fellowship Training in 1996, Dr. Kaplan was a Professor of Psychiatry and the Director of the Molecular Neurobiology and Genetics Program of the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. As a senior administrator, he was responsible for the development of the NIMH Intramural Research Program’s multidisciplinary neuroscience training program which encompassed the activities of 300-400 postdoctoral fellows, clinical research associates, graduate students, and undergraduate college interns and summer students. Dr. Kaplan has served on the editorial boards of numerous professional journals and as a member of several NIH scientific review committees and advisory boards. At present, he is a Senior Investigator and Chief of the Section of Molecular Neurobiology at the NIMH. His research focuses on the subcellular compartmentation of neuronal gene expression, using primary sympathetic neurons as a model cell culture system and transgenic animal methodology.

 

Barry Kaplan will participate in the session Trafficking and function of axonal RNAs: new insights into the biology of the axon and presynaptic nerve terminal (11 June, 14:00) with a talk entitled Subcellular compartmentalization of neuronal RNAs: an overview

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[no biosketch available]

 

Jan van Minnen will participate in the session Trafficking and function of axonal RNAs: new insights into the biology of the axon and presynaptic nerve terminal (11 June, 14:00) with a talk entitled An unexpected role for glial cells in axonal protein synthesis

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 Marcus Munafò is Professor of Biological Psychology in the School of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol, and Director of the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group. His group is part of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, and the Medical Research Council Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol. His research focuses on the neurobiological and genetic basis for tobacco and alcohol use, including smoking cessation, with two themes: The laboratory study of neurobiological pathways involved in substance use, and the large-scale longitudinal study of genetic influences on substance use and treatment response. He has a long-standing interest in the role of incentive structures in science, and their impact on research reproducibility. This work includes various meta-analyses, and studies of publication bias across many domains (e.g., neuroimaging, genetics and clinical trials). His recent work includes papers on the analytical flexibility and statistical power in neuroimaging studies.

 

Marcus Munafò will participate in the session Challenges in neuroscience and new approaches to improve the status quo (11 June, 14:00) with a talk entitled Challenges in neuroscience: from reproducibility issues to publication bias

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Professor Tim Bussey is, together with Lisa Saksida, head of the Translational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at the University of Cambridge (UK). The driving force behind their work is exactly as the name suggests: to understand the neuroscience of cognition, and to facilitate translation of that understanding from animal models to humans and back again. In order to facilitate such translation, they have developed a test-battery using a touchscreen-equipped operant chamber for rodents that matches many of the existing clinical batteries.
One of their main interests is the organisation of representations in the medial temporal lobe and the mechanisms underlying object recognition and memory processing. The Bussey-Saksida lab has recently developed a special interest in spatial ‘pattern separation’, which refers to the ability of the hippocampal dentate gyrus to transform similar input patterns into less correlated output signals. Using a touchscreen-based test, they were the first to empirically show that adult-born neurons in the hippocampal dentate gyrus are involved in a behavioural measure of pattern separation and, more recently, have shown a role for brain-derived neurotrophic factor in this process. During his talk, Tim will present insights and recent developments in pattern separation, adult neurogenesis and memory processing. 

 

Tim Bussey will participate in the session Hippocampus function in health and disease: on memory, pattern separation and adult neurogenesis (11 June, 14:00) with a talk entitled Neurogenesis, pattern separation and the representational hierarchical view of memory

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 Dr. Woo is the Director of the Laboratory of Cellular Neuropathology and a co-Director of the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at McLean Hospital. He is also Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital after completing his residency training in Psychiatry at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital and the UCLA Medical Center. His main research interest is in defining the nature of cortical circuitry disturbances in schizophrenia and understanding the developmental neurobiological pathways that lead to these disturbances. Aside from his research, he maintains an active clinical practice.

 

T. Wilson Woo will participate in the session Emerging perspectives of schizophrenia – beyond dopamine and glutamate (11 June, 14:00) with a talk entitled Neurobiology of schizophrenia onset

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Dwight Bergles is a professor in the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. He serves as Director for the Multiphoton Imaging Core facility at JHU, Co-Director of the Neuroscience Graduate Program and has been a faculty member in the Neurobiology Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory.

Dwight received his bachelor’s degree in Biology from Boston University and Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Physiology from Stanford University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Vollum Institute in Portland Oregon before joining the faculty at Hopkins in 2000 as assistant professor. He was promoted to professor in 2011. The goals of Dwight’s laboratory are to understand how interactions between neurons and glial cells contribute to CNS development, neuromodulation in the adult brain, and neurodegeneration is diseases such as ALS. His studies have included analysis of glutamate transporter function and Ca2+ signaling in astrocytes, the generation of spontaneous activity in the developing auditory system, and the development and dysfunction of oligodendroglia.

Our recent studies have focused on defining the mechanisms responsible for activating astrocyte networks in the adult brain and the physiological significance of this activity. Our experiments indicate that there are two functionally distinct, but interdependent modes of Ca2+ signaling in astrocytes. We have developed new conditional transgenic mouse lines that allow visualization of Ca2+ dynamics in distinct cell types that we have used to define the behavioral states under which astrocyte networks become activated in vivo, and the mechanisms that trigger the two distinct types of Ca2+ transients in these cells. In addition, we are developing new methodologies to enable visualization of astrocyte network activity in freely moving animals.

 

Dwight Bergles will participate in the session Astrocytes, stars of the brain (GliaNed session 1) (11 June, 14:00) with a talk entitled Global engagement of astrocyte networks during locomotion

111

[no biosketch available]

 

Frank Miedema is the keynote speaker in the session Science in transition (11 June, 19:30) with a talk entitled Science in Transition (SiT)

116
Sandi
Carmen
Sandi
Kaminska
Bozena
Kaminska
Blanpied
Thomas
Blanpied
Beaudet
Arthur
Beaudet
Bertrand
Daniel
Bertrand
Walton
Mark
Walton
Liston
Conor
Liston

Carmen Sandi is Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, where she is the Director of the Brain Mind Institute and leads the Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics. Her goal is to understand how stress affects brain function, behavior and cognition. Her lab is developing an ambitious research program combining approaches in rodents and humans to understand how stress affects the social brain and the emergence of violence. Carmen Sandi has published over 150 research articles in major international journals and contributed to various books. She has organized several conferences on ‘stress, brain and behavior’ and ‘violence’. She has received several awards, including the EBBS-Elsevier Behavioral Brain Research Prize. She has served in numerous boards and was the President of the European Brain and Behavior Society (EBBS). She also holds several editorial commitments, among others being the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

 

Carmen Sandi will participate in the session Energizing mitochondria to combat neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders (12 June, 09:00) with a talk entitled Brain mitochondrial function in anxiety and social competition

and

Carmen Sandi will participate in the session Preclinical models of aggressive disorders (12 June, 14:00) with a talk entitled Stress and the vicious cycle of violence

117

Dr. Bozena Kaminska is since 2003 Professor at the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology Warsaw and since 2009 Director of the Postgraduate School of Molecular Medicine, Warsaw Medical University. She research concerns studies of signaling pathways, transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of brain inflammation and microglial functions under pathological condittions. She has implemented RNA- and ChIP-sequencing techniques intergrated with bioinfomatics to the studies of epigenetic regulation specifically in microglia and gliomas cells. Prof. Kaminska graduated in 1985 from the University of Warsaw. She obtained Ph.D. in biochemistry (1991) and habilitation in molecular biology (1997) at the Nencki Institute (Warsaw, Poland). In 1994-1996 she did postdoctoral training in molecular neurobiology at the Dept. Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada and in 2001-2002 she was a visiting scientist studying glial biology at the Brain Research Institute, UCLA, USA. Since 2003 Bozena Kaminska has been Professor of molecular biology at the Nencki Institute and is currently head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology.

 

Bozena Kaminska will participate in the session (Epi)genetic regulation of microglial function in CNS health and disease (GliaNed session 2) (12 June, 09:00) with a talk entitled Epigenetic control of microglia functional polarization in brain pathologies

122

Dr. Thomas Blanpied graduated from Yale University (New Haven CO, USA) with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology. His long-standing interest in cognition and learning has lead to his current work to understand the cellular processes that underlie mental health and psychiatric disorder. At the University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh PA, USA), he obtained a Ph.D. in the Department of Neuroscience with Jon Johnson, Ph.D., where he used single-channel recordings to study the mechanisms by which the anti-Parkinsonian and anti-Alzheimer’s drugs amantadine and memantine act on NMDA receptors. He then undertook postdoctoral training with George Augustine, Ph.D. and Michael Ehlers, M.D. Ph.D. at Duke University (Durham NC, USA) in the Department of Neurobiology, with whom he studied the cell biological mechanisms of synaptic transmission and neural plasticity. He joined the University of Maryland Department of Physiology as an Assistant Professor in 2005, and became Associate Professor with tenure in 2012. His lab utilizes a number of novel assays centered on single-molecule localization and tracking using photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM) to examine protein positioning and movement at the synapse in living cells at the highest resolution possible. These tools provide the perfect complement to whole-cell and single-channel electrophysiological assays, which naturally track receptor function at high speed but typically with little or no spatial resolution. The lab aims to combine these approaches with molecular perturbation of protein function to provide unprecedented spatial, temporal, and molecular understanding of the protein trafficking events in spines.

 

Thomas Blanpied will participate in the session Catching neurons in action: advanced imaging techniques to study synaptic transmission in living neurons (12 June, 09:00) with a talk entitled How molecular organization guides the function of single synapses

128

Dr. Beaudet received his M.D. degree from Yale, did pediatric residency training at Johns Hopkins, and was a research associate at the National Institutes of Health before joining Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in 1971 where he has remained to the present. He has made diverse contributions in the field of mammalian genetics including discovery of uniparental disomy in humans and publishing over 250 original research articles. He has argued for the importance of epigenetics in human disease since 2002 and proposed a mixed epigenetic and genetic and mixed de novo and inherited model for oligogenic inheritance in autism. In 2004, Beaudet and a BCM team of investigators were the first in the US to introduce array comparative genomic hybridization (array CGH) into the clinical lab, and then in 2011 with additional collaborators especially from the Human Genome Sequencing Center, they introduced whole exome sequencing into the clinical laboratory. His current work is focused on investigation of a neuronal carnitine deficiency hypothesis for autism, development of cell-based methods for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis, and the role of copy number variants and point mutations in neurobehavioral disabilities, and especially on the importance of the CHRNA7 gene in intellectual disability, autism, and schizophrenia.

 

Arthur Beaudet will participate in the session Nicotinic receptors: from addiction to cognition enhancement (12 June, 09:00) with a talk entitled The role of the alpha-7 neuronal nicotinic receptor (CHRNA7) in neurological and psychiatric disease

133

Dr. Bertrand was Professor at the Medical Faculty of Geneva from 1994-2010, and is now Professor emeritus and since 2007 the co-founder, President and CEO of HiQScreen. His expertise in electronic and neuroscience, more specifically in sensory physiology (vision and hearing) and cholinergic neurotransmissions, has prompted his wide success in national and international collaborations. He maintained his dual activity in the areas of neurophysiology and electronics, including development of “artificial retina”; work in the field of microfluidic and multielectrode arrays and more recently in NEMS (NanoElectroMechanical Systems). He has also been actively participating as a member of several EEC consortia including NEMSIC (Nano-Electro-Mechnical Integrated Circuit Systems). He is specialized in the field of electrophysiology and characterization of the neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. He was the first to illustrate the functionality of the ?7 receptors. His work collaboration with Pr. J.P. Changeux’s group on the properties of the nAChRs at the molecular level revealed some of the fundamental principles of these ligand gated ion channels. He was also a pioneer in studying the functional effects of single point mutations associated with epilepsy. He published about two hundreds scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals including Nature, Science, Neuron and PNAS.

 

Daniel Bertrand will participate in the session Nicotinic receptors: from addiction to cognition enhancement (12 June, 09:00) with a talk entitled Nicotinic receptors: overview HiQScreen Sàrl

134

Mark Walton is a Wellcome Trust Fellow and University Research Lecturer at the University of Oxford, UK. His current research focuses on how striatal dopamine encodes value and how this influences and is influenced by action selection. His past and present work is characterised by its extremely translational nature, with research spanning from rodents and macaques to humans. Dr Walton started his PhD in 1999 under Matthew Rushworth and David Bannerman. His thesis focused on the role of the anterior cingulate cortex in decisionmaking using functional neuroimaging in humans and neuropsychological techniques in rodents. Upon completion, Dr. Walton stayed on in Oxford through a Wellcome Trust Prize Fellowship (2003-2005) from where he broadened his research to other frontal lobe regions, pharmacological manipulations, and non-human primate models of decision making. In 2005, Dr. Walton obtained a Human Frontiers Short Term Fellowship to visit the University of Washington in Seattle with Paul Phillips, where probed the dynamics of dopamine release during cost-benefit decision making. He continued this research as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Washington University through a Wellcome Trust Advanced Training Fellowship to. In 2010, Dr. Walton took up a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellowship at the University of Oxford.

 

Mark Walton will participate in the session When affect meets effect: a translational view on how motivation influences action (12 June, 09:00) with a talk entitled Mesolimbic dopamine: reward prediction in action

136

Biosketch Conor Liston

Education, training:
• M.D., Weill Cornell Medical College 2008
• Ph.D., The Rockefeller University 2007
• A.B., Harvard College 2002

Positions
• Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College 2014 -
• Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, Brain and Mind Research Institute, Weill Cornell Medical College 2014 -
• Visiting Fellow in Psychiatry, Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College 2012 – 2013

Selected publications
•Default Mode Network Mechanisms of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation in Depression. Biological psychiatry. 2014 • Circadian glucocorticoid oscillations promote learning-dependent synapse formation and maintenance. Nature neuroscience. 2013
• Motor deficits correlate with resting state motor network connectivity in patients with brain tumours. Brain : a journal of neurology. 2012
• Glucocorticoids are critical regulators of dendritic spine development and plasticity in vivo. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2011
• Atypical prefrontal connectivity in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: pathway to disease or pathological end point?. Biological psychiatry. 2011
• A genetic variant BDNF polymorphism alters extinction learning in both mouse and human. Science (New York, N.Y.). 2010
• Psychosocial stress reversibly disrupts prefrontal processing and attentional control. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2009
• Frontostriatal connectivity and its role in cognitive control in parent-child dyads with ADHD. The American journal of psychiatry. 2007
• Stress-induced alterations in prefrontal cortical dendritic morphology predict selective impairments in perceptual attentional set-shifting. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience. 2006
• Anterior cingulate and posterior parietal cortices are sensitive to dissociable forms of conflict in a task-switching paradigm. Neuron. 2006
• Frontostriatal microstructure modulates efficient recruitment of cognitive control. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991). 2006
• Repeated stress induces dendritic spine loss in the rat medial prefrontal cortex. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991). 2006
• Imaging the developing brain: what have we learned about cognitive development?. Trends in cognitive sciences. 2005
• Fiber tracking using magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging and its applications to human brain development. Mental retardation and developmental disabilities research reviews. 2003
• Cognitive flexibility across the sleep-wake cycle: REM-sleep enhancement of anagram problem solving. Brain research. Cognitive brain research. 2002  

 

Conor Liston will participate in the session The essence of timing: unraveling time domains of central glucocorticoid effects (12 June, 11:00) with a talk entitled Circadian glucocorticoid oscillations promote learning-related synapse formation and maintenance

and

Conor Liston will participate in the session The essence of timing: unraveling time domains of central glucocorticoid effects (12 June, 11:00) with a talk entitled Circadian glucocorticoid oscillations promote learning-related synapse formation and maintenance

141
Chouliaras
Leonidas
Chouliaras
Richardson
Bill
Richardson
Holmes
Andrew
Holmes
Donner
Tobias
Donner
Moechars
Diederik
Moechars
Lynch
Marina
Lynch
Alkemade
Anneke
Alkemade

[no biosketch available]

 

Leonidas Chouliaras will participate in the session Novel mechanisms underlying the early steps in Alzheimer disease (12 June, 11:00) with a talk entitled DNA (hydroxy)methylation in ageing and Alzheimer's Disease

184

MYELIN, MOVEMENT and MOTOR SKILLS LEARNING

William D Richardson, University College London (UCL), UK

William (Bill) Richardson is Professor of Biology and Director of the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research (WIBR) at UCL. Most of his scientific career has been spent at UCL investigating neural development and biology, specializing in glial cells (oligodendrocytes and astrocytes) and their interactions with neurons. He was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2011 and Fellow of the Royal Society in 2013.

Among his contributions has been the discovery that platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) is the major mitogen for oligodendrocyte precursors during development and in the adult. PDGF receptor-alpha (PDGFRa) has been widely used as a marker for these cells in vivo, allowing huge strides in understanding the biology of the oligodendrocyte lineage and myelination. He also demonstrated that most oligodendrocytes in the spinal cord develop from the same neural precursors as motor neurons - an unexpected finding that drew attention to the evolutionary origins of oligodendrocytes and myelin on the one hand and, on the other, the central importance of myelin for motor function and control. Recently, his lab has demonstrated that active myelination is required for adult mice to learn a new motor skill (running at speed on a wheel with irregularly spaced rungs). This fits with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies that detect structural changes - possibly reflecting new myelination – in white matter tracts of people who learn complex skills (e.g. juggling).

*McKenzie, I.A., *Ohayon, D., Li, H., Paes de Faria, J., Emery, B., Tohyama, K. and Richardson, W.D. (2014). Motor skill learning requires active central myelination. Science 346, 318-322. * equal contributions

Young, K.M., Psachoulia, K., Tripathi, R.B., Dunn, S.-J., Cossell, L., Attwell, D., Tohyama, K. and Richardson, W.D. (2013). Oligodendrocyte dynamics in the healthy adult CNS: evidence for myelin remodelling. Neuron 77, 873-885.

Tsai, H.-H., Li, H., Fuentealba, L., Molofsky, A.V., Taveira?Marques, R., Zhuang, H., Tenney, A., Murnen, A.T., Fancy, S.P.J., Merkle, F., Kessaris, N., Alvarez?Buylla, A., Richardson, W.D.* and Rowitch, D.H.* (2012). Regional astrocyte allocation regulates CNS synaptogenesis and repair. Science 337, 358-362.

Li, H., Paes de Faria, J., Andrew, P. Nitarska, J. and Richardson, W.D. (2011). Phosphorylation regulates OLIG2 cofactor choice and the motor neuron-oligodendrocyte fate switch. Neuron 69, 918-929.

Rivers, L.E., Young, K.M., Rizzi, M., Jamen, F., Psachoulia, K., Wade, A., Kessaris, N. and Richardson, W.D. (2008). PDGFRA/NG2-positive glia generate myelinating oligodendrocytes and piriform projection neurons in adult mice. Nat. Neurosci. 11, 1392-1401.

 

 

Bill Richardson will participate in the session White matter in health and disease (GliaNed session 3) (12 June, 11:00) with a talk entitled Myelin, movement and motor skills learning

147

Dr. Andrew Holmes is currently Chief of the Laboratory of Behavioral and Genomic Neuroscience at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Bethesda, USA.  For his graduate work, he studied the pharmacology at the University of Leeds (UK) and then trained in behavioral neuroscience and genetics as a Visiting Fellow at the National Institute on Mental Illness (USA).  The overarching mission of his current laboratory is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the causes of alcoholism and comorbid neuropsychiatric conditions such as mood and anxiety disorders.  His long-term goal is to help identify new directions for the prevention and effective treatment of these devastating diseases.  To this end, we are using models of chronic alcohol exposure and chronic stress to examine how these environmental insults reshape brain circuits to modify behavior, and why they do so in a manner that varies greatly from individual to individual as a function of genetics, sex and age.  A major current focus of his work is how alcohol and stress affect the structure and function of circuits interconnecting the prefrontal cortex with limbic and dorsal striatal regions that are critical for the regulation of emotion, cognition and executive control over drug-seeking.

 

Andrew Holmes will participate in the session Brain circuits of compulsivity in drug addiction and OCD (12 June, 11:00) with a talk entitled Corticostriatal systems mediating reward learning

152

MD, Charité, Humboldt-University of Berlin (2003). PhD, Berlin Neuroimaging Centre, Charité (2003). Postdoctoral fellow, Dept of Neurophysiology, Hamburg and Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Donders Institute, Nijmegen (2003-6). Postdoctoral fellow, Computational Neuroimaging Lab, New York University (2006-9). Assistant Professor, Brain and Cognition, University of Amsterdam (since 2009). Associated P.I., Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin (since 2011).

 

Tobias Donner will participate in the session The neuroscience of perceptual decision making (12 June, 11:00) with a talk entitled Brainstem modulation of cortical decision computations

338

Preclinical Biologist with >20 years of experience in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) research. Internationally recognized in the AD research community for work in basic neurobiology and pharmaceutical R&D with more than 70 peer reviewed articles and several patents. PhD (4 years) and post doc (3 years) training on the development and study of animal models for AD. Fifteen year active at Janssen in a multitude of drug discovery projects from TI-TV to NME delivery. Today developing therapies for disease modification in AD.

 

Diederik Moechars will participate in the session Amyloid and beyond: new mechanisms in Alzheimer’s pathology (12 June, 14:00) with a talk entitled On the road to a disease modifying therapy for Alzheimer’s disease

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Marina Lynch, is based in the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience in Dublin, Ireland and heads a research group of 10 postgraduate students and post-doctoral researchers. The group investigates the effects of inflammatory changes in the brain with age and evaluates the contribution of inflammation in the brain to los of neuronal function. The ultimate goal of the work is to identify the factors that confer risk and to seek mechanisms by which restoration of function might be achieved. She has published over 200 papers, is an elected member of the Royal Irish Academy and a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin.

 

Marina Lynch will participate in the session The role of neuroimmune activation in age-associated cognitive decline (12 June, 14:00) with a talk entitled Neuroinflammatory changes in the age-related and amyloid β-induced deterioration in synaptic function in the brain

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Dr. Alkemade is an expert in human neuroanatomy working at the Amsterdam Brain and Cognition Center (Forstmann lab). In her work she aims to uncover the functional neuroanatomy in health and disease. Her aim is to translate post-mortem histological findings into information relevant for clinicians as well as other fields of neuroscience. Her work contributes to increased understanding of the pathogenesis underlying neurological disease. Her past work focused on the central effects of thyroid hormone signaling. At present, her work is focused on increasing insight in the human subthalamic nucleus, which is targeted by deep brain stimulation (DBS) in patients with Parkinson’s disease.

 

Anneke Alkemade will participate in the session Basal ganglia function: Complemental research strategies (12 June, 14:00) with a talk entitled Does empirical evidence support the tripartite hypothesis of the STN?

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Matsumoto
Masayuki
Matsumoto
Roelfsema
Pieter
Roelfsema
de Lange
Floris
de Lange

Masayuki Matsumoto is a Professor at University of Tsukuba, Japan. He received his PhD in Neurophysiology of the visual system from the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Japan in 2005. He received his post-doctoral training from Dr. Okihide Hikosaka at NIH. During his post-doctoral studies, he became interested in the brain’s reward system, which took him in the field of Neurophysiology of dopamine and other monoamine neurons. In 2009 he became an assistant professor at Kyoto University, Japan, and in 2012 a full professor at University of Tsukuba, Japan. He received Best Paper Award from Japan Neural Network Society in 2008, Young Investigator Award from Japan Neuroscience Society in 2010, and The Young Scientists’ Prize, The Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2013. He studies the role of monoamine systems, such as dopamine and serotonin, in motivational and cognitive functions. Using electrophysiological and pharmacological techniques, he examines what signals monoamine neurons convey while animals are performing cognitive tasks and how the signals, released monoamine, work in targeted brain areas to achieve the tasks.

 

Masayuki Matsumoto will participate in the session Reward processing in perception and cognition (12 June, 14:00) with a talk entitled Motivational and cognitive signals of midbrain dopamine neurons

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Pieter R. Roelfsema received his MD degree in 1991. For his PhD work he went to the group of Wolf Singer at the Max-Planck-Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt (Germany) and he received his PhD degree at the University of Amsterdam in 1995. In 2002 he was employed by the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of the Netherlands in the institute now named Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. In 2007 he was appointed as general director of this institute. In 2005 he became strategic Professor at the Free University of Amsterdam and in 2012 also Professor at the AMC in Amsterdam. Pieter Roelfsema received the highly competitive NWO-VICI award (2008) and the ERC-Advanced grant (2013). He studies visual perception, plasticity and memory in the visual system using multi-electrode recording techniques in experimental animals, behavioral paradigms in humans, and computational neuroscience approaches. He investigates how neurons in different brain areas work together during tasks that require thinking with the visual brain. Even the simplest visual task activates thousands neurons across a large number of cortical and subcortical brain areas. Roelfsema studies how these networks of neurons work together to solve the task and how networks configure themselves during learning.

 

Pieter Roelfsema will participate in the session Reward processing in perception and cognition (12 June, 14:00) with a talk entitled Why reward and attention jointly gate learning

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Floris P. de Lange is a principal investigator of the Prediction and Attention laboratory at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour of the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He was trained at the Donders Institute in Nijmegen, and was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Stanislas Dehaene at the Neurospin Centre in Paris, France. His laboratory examines how percepts and decisions are shaped by our expectations and goals, using a combination of behavioural and neuroimaging methods (magnetoencephalography, functional MRI and transcranial magnetic stimulation) in healthy volunteers and clinical populations. His research is supported by the James McDonnell Science Foundation and the Netherlands Science Foundation. 

 

Floris de Lange is the keynote speaker in the session Neurofederation Lecture (12 June, 16:00) with a talk entitled What you see is what you expect?

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