Seminars
Future
Dr. Ben Engelhard
:Abstract
Learning through rewards is a fundamental aspect of human behavior, and it is mediated by the dopamine system in the brain. Traditionally, the dopamine system was thought to facilitate learning by transmitting a single error signal to the brain's learning circuits. Computationally, this is analogous to the implementation of a simple algorithm (temporal difference learning) previously discovered by the machine learning community. However, recent research has challenged this notion by demonstrating that the dopamine system exhibits significant diversity in its activity, which is inconsistent with the single error signal hypothesis. What does this mean for our understanding of how the brain learns? In the talk, I will explore these recent findings and describe the research we are conducting in our lab to elucidate how diversity in dopamine activity can underlie learning. In particular, our work is based on the hypothesis that this diversity is especially important when learning something complex.
Auditorium 015, the Nano Building (# 51)
Prof. Segev Barak
:Abstract
Alcohol-associated memories play an important role in relapse in alcohol use disorder. Disrupting these memories, which become labile upon retrieval, through interference with their reconsolidation process, could reduce relapse. Memories are thought to be encoded within specific patterns of sparsely distributed neurons, called neuronal ensembles. We previously showed that pharmacological and behavioral interference with alcohol memory reconsolidation can reduce relapse in animal models. Recently, we also explored the role of neuronal ensembles in alcohol-memory reconsolidation and relapse and found that they display a unique transcriptional signature. In this talk, Prof. Barak will present different angles of his research on the neuronal and behavioral mechanisms of alcohol memory reconsolidation and maladaptive memories that cause relapse, and on the potential strategies for relapse prevention.
Auditorium 015, the Nano Building (# 51)
Dr. Shahar Alon
Bar-Ilan University
Auditorium 015, the Nano Building (# 51)
Past
Prof. Pablo Blinder
Auditorium 015, the Nano Building (# 51)
Prof. Shira Knafo
Auditorium 015, the Nano Building (# 51)
Interplay Between Hippocampal TACR3 and Systemic Testosterone in Regulating Anxiety-Associated Synaptic Plasticity
Dr. Naomi Habib
Goren-Khazzam Lecturer in Brain Sciences | Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences | Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Auditorium 015, the Nano Building (# 51)
The Road Not Taken: Distinct cellular dynamics in Alzheimer's disease and Aging.
Alzheimer's Disease is a devastating neurodegenerative disease of advanced age that progresses slowly over more than 20 years. To effectively treat the disease there is a need to shift from therapies at late stages of the disease, to early detection and prevention therapies at the pre-symptomatic stage of the disease. Yet, for developing effective prevention therapies there is a need to uncover the changes in brain cells throughout the course of the disease and to uncover the differences between disease and healthy brain aging. To address this, we are applying cutting edge molecular technologies and machine learning methods to define the cellular and molecular events underlying the processes of disease and aging in mouse models and Human brains. Specifically, in this talk I will describe recent works in which we built detailed cellular maps of ~500 human aged brain. Our maps identified specific sets of cells predicted as drivers of Alzheimer's disease. Furthermore, we uncovered two distinct paths of cellular change in aging brains that distinguish between the processes leading to Alzheimer's Disease-dementia and the path leading to alternative brain aging. This discovery overcame several major obstacles in the field, predicted driver of disease and molecular markers of early pre-symptomatic stage of the disease, and highlights the differences between Alzheimer's and brain aging. Our work provides a new perspective of Alzheimer's Disease pathophysiology that could inform the development of new therapeutic interventions.
Dr. Avi Mendelsohn
Sagol department of Neurobiology, University of Haifa.
Auditorium 015, the Nano Building (# 51)
Dr. Arseny Finkelstein
Sagol School of Neuroscience, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University
Auditorium 015, the Nano Building (# 51)
Prof. Avihu Klar
HUJI
Auditorium 015, the Nano Building (# 51)
Stepping, flying or swimming - evolution of patterned locomotion in tetrapods
BGU
Auditorium 015, the Nano Building (# 51)
Maladaptive fronto-parietal connectivity as a mechanism of response inhibition in ADHD
Abstract: Reduced ability to suppress inadequate but prepotent responses is of the most prominent characteristics of children and adults with ADHD. It impacts academic performance, social interactions and quality of life. While response inhibition is executed via fronto-striato-parietal networks, the mechanisms underlying deficient inhibition in ADHD are largely unknown, and progress in recognizing the neural bases of ADHD is paramount to the development and evaluation of efficient treatments. In my talk I will present a series of studies utilizing multimodal imaging data alongside diagnostic, phenotypic and behavioral data to isolate inhibition-related neural activity. The findings force the point of treating ADHD as a continuum whereby brain correlates are scaled with severity, and point to the potential of individual differences in the modulation of IPS activation and in tract-specific functional and structural connectivity properties as neuromarkers of ADHD.
BGU
Auditorium 015, the Nano Building (# 51)
Maladaptive fronto-parietal connectivity as a mechanism of response inhibition in ADHD
Abstract: Reduced ability to suppress inadequate but prepotent responses is of the most prominent characteristics of children and adults with ADHD. It impacts academic performance, social interactions and quality of life. While response inhibition is executed via fronto-striato-parietal networks, the mechanisms underlying deficient inhibition in ADHD are largely unknown, and progress in recognizing the neural bases of ADHD is paramount to the development and evaluation of efficient treatments. In my talk I will present a series of studies utilizing multimodal imaging data alongside diagnostic, phenotypic and behavioral data to isolate inhibition-related neural activity. The findings force the point of treating ADHD as a continuum whereby brain correlates are scaled with severity, and point to the potential of individual differences in the modulation of IPS activation and in tract-specific functional and structural connectivity properties as neuromarkers of ADHD.
Prof. Tal Dvir
Director, Tel Aviv University Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
Sagol Center for Regenerative Biotechnology,
Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research, Faculty of Life Science
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
Sagol School of Neuroscience
Auditorium 015, the Nano Building (# 51), 12:00AM
Engineering personalized tissue implants: From 3D printing to bionic organs
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ben Gurion University
Auditorium 015, the Nano Building (# 51)
Understanding the Baby’s Mind: Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Caregiving
Parent-child relationships are fundamental for children’s development and well-being, particularly in infancy. Infants are inherently dependent on regulation by their caregiver, as they gradually develop the ability to regulate themselves. Infants use affective signals (“cues” such as facial expressions or cries) to communicate their needs, and parents are required to detect these signals, decipher their meaning, and meet the needs they communicate. In other words, successful regulation of the infant requires parental mentalizing—the ability to understand the infant’s mind and internal states. Yet, despite the importance and complexity of understanding and meeting the infant’s needs, the neurocognitive mechanisms supporting parental mentalizing are little understood. Recent work indicates neural plasticity in brain regions associated with mentalizing across the transition to parenthood, further highlighting the importance of understanding how parental mentalizing is shaped. In this talk, I will provide a framework for disentangling the neurocognitive processes supporting parental mentalizing and regulation of the infant. I will focus on (1) maternal neural, cognitive, and affective responding to infant distress and non-distress in pregnancy and precursors of caregiving risk and resilience, and (2) the role of working memory in real-time mentalizing about infant mental states via the concept of event segmentation. Through these two lines of research, I will demonstrate how gaining a better understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms of caregiving can shed light on adaptive and maladaptive parenting behaviors and infant development.
Dr. Genela Morris, Ichilov Medical Center
Auditorium 015, the Nano Building (# 51)
Learning attention: a novel update mechanism for attention in a multidimensional world
For decades, the term reinforcement learning referred to describing how, in a given situation, we learn how to choose actions that are most beneficial. Algorithms have been devised, and their neural correlates have been sought and found in the cortico-striatal system, and its dopaminergic input. However, in realistic environments is actually a two-tier process. To correctly learn what to do in a given situation, one must also learn what attributes of the situation are relevant an should be learned about. In this talk, I will present our theoretical and experimental results on this distinction, and how it relates to motivation. Using rodent studies, I will describe results suggesting that neuronal activity in the structures controlling behavior is reshaped to represent the environment in behaviorally relevant dimensions, and that this process depends on dopamine. I will show that animals’ behavior indicates that state representation is modal, such that different attributes are represented and updated separately, and that they are weighted by an attention term, indicating the relative importance of a dimension. I will present a possible update rule for attention, and show preliminary results pointing to involvement of the striatal cholinergic system in this process.
