Neuroscientists Talk Shop

Thursday, April 13, 2017 Joanna Phillips (UCSF) fields our questions about the cellular microenvironment:  how cell signaling and interactions are mediated by glycocalyx proteoglycans and components of the extracellular matrix.  The discussion touches on how these cell surface and microenvironment factors impact migration and cancer proliferation. Duration: 44 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Annie Lin (Asst Professor, UTSA) Asif Maroof (Asst Prof, UTSA) Fidel Santamaria (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Monday, April 10, 2017 Jim Surmeier (Northwestern University) talks to us about integrating circuit, ion channel and bioenergetic vantage points to define quantitative, neuron-specific mechanisms of pathology in Parkinson’s disease.  He guides the group through a discussion of how his hypothesis-driven approach is informing an exciting new clinical trial for slowing the progression of Parkinson’s disease. Duration: 47 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Alfonso Apicella (Asst Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Asif Maroof (Asst Prof, UTSA) Carlos Paladini (Professor, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, April 6, 2017 James Tepper (Rutgers Newark) joins us 10 years down the line to revisit the topic of our inaugural podcast discussion, which centered on the diversity and origins of striatal interneurons.  A number of the original group are joined by some new faculty to consider how the field has expanded and evolved in the last decade. Duration: 43 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Alfonso Apicella (Asst Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Asif Maroof (Asst Prof, UTSA) Carlos Paladini (Professor, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper (the very same) for original music.

Thursday, March 30, 2017 Alan Lerner (Case Western Reserve) offers his perspective as a clinician-scientist in understanding the scope of Brain Health as a “big science” initiative.  He describes how a broad alignment of public health, medical, clinical and basic science perspectives are informing new perspectives on the treatment and prevention of neurodegenerative diseases and dementia. Duration: 38 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Asif Maroof (Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, March 23, 2017 Gemma Casadesus-Smith (Kent State) discusses new strategies in thinking about Alzheimer’s disease and its prevention, and what we understand about the disease process through clinical indicators.  The group takes on some hard questions about the approaches being used to guide clinical trials, and why some ideas appear to linger past their prime. Duration: 52 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Hyoung-gon Lee (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Asif Maroof (Asst Prof, UTSA) George Perry (Dean, College of Science UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Nick Hollon (Fellow, Xin Jin Lab, Salk Institute) leads us in a fantastic discussion on neuroeconomic approaches to understanding the neural correlates that govern value-based decision making. Duration: 41 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Carlos Paladini (Professor, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music. Thursday, March 9, 2017

Thursday, March 2, 2017 Christiane Linster (Cornell) discusses the theory and experimental realities at play in modeling learning, memory and neuromodulation in the olfactory system of rodents. Duration: 40 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, February 16, 2017 Bennet Ibey (Air Force Research Laboratory) discusses the biophysics of how membranes react to electric field pulses.  The discussion centers around our reference point for this phenomenom, electroporation. Duration: 48 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Fidel Santamaria (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, February 9, 2017 Peter Kalivas (Medical University of South Carolina) discusses how he is incorporating the tetrapartite synapse (pre-synapse, post-synapse, glia and extra-cellular matrix) into understanding addiction circuits and behavior. Duration: 38 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Assist Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, February 2, 2017 Harel Shouval (UT Health, Houston) discusses building models for how time constants of neural circuits adapt to reflect the time constraints of the world.  For instance, learning requires associating cues and later rewards, yet the teaching signal (the reward) is temporally distant from the cue itself well outside the timescale of individual neurons. For reference, the discussion touches on these papers. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28018206 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26377457 Duration: 41 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, January 26, 2017 Henry Yin (Duke) discusses a take on hierarchical movement control based on integrative approaches that marry kinematics and optogenetically controlled behavioral assays. The discussion references this review and paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27306757 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27091436 Duration: 34 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Matt Higgs (Asst Prof, UTSA) Carlos Paladini (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Fidel Santamaria (Assoc Prof, UTSA Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, January 19, 2017 Leslie Whitaker (NIDA Fellow) talks about how silent synapses in neuronal ensembles might underlie associative learning in the ventral tegmental area and prefrontal cortex. Duration: 39 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Alyssa Petko (PhD student, UTSA Claire Stelly (Fellow, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, December 1, 2016 David Weinshenker (Emory U School of Med ) discusses norepinephrine physiology and it’s relevance to the neuropathology of degenerative diseases and addiction. Duration: 47 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Alyssa Petko (PhD student, UTSA Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, November 3, 2016 Geoffrey Schoenbaum (National Institutes of Drug Abuse) discusses the advantages of using principles of learning theory in physiological investigations of associative learning and decision making.  The group reflects on the caveats of constraining behavior and losing the generality of coding Duration: 30 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, October 27, 2016 Art Riegel (Medical University of South Carolina) talks with the group about competing ideas of a dopamine neuron archetype and our deepening sense of the heterogeneity of dopamine neurons.  He discusses how he is examining the mechanisms and transducers of stress on the dopamine system.  Duration: 30 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Carlos Paladini (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Yoland Smith (Yerkes Primate Center, Emory University) discusses how the motor symptoms of Parkinsonism may not connect with our emerging  understanding of the the complex interconnectivity of the basal ganglia  thalamo-cortical loop.  The group discuss anatomical details of the  circuit in rodent and primate, and consider other possible network components that might generate the complex pathophysiology of  Parkinson’s Disease. Apologies for the crackle in  the recording.  We recommend not doing this one with headphones.  This one is worth it though, please bear with us! Duration: 43 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Alfonso Apicella (Asst Prof, UTSA) Carlos Paladini (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, September 22, 2016 Susan Patterson (Temple University) introduces neuro-immune interactions in the CNS, and discusses her ideas about how immune dysregulation and cognitive vulnerability may collide in the aging brain. Duration: 37 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Isabel Muzzio (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016 Howard Eichenbaum (Boston University) discusses “memory fields” in hippocampus as a way to think about the fundamental associative properties of the hippocampus.  He introduces place cells, and discusses the discovery that these cells code for time as well as space, as well as other  dimensions. Duration: 35 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Alfonso Apicella (Asst Prof, UTSA) Isabel Muzzio (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Todd Troyer (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, August 25, 2016 Jim Lechleiter (Cellular & Structural Biology, UTHSCSA) gets us up to speed on astrocytes, their role in brain health and homeostasis, and their properties as excitable cells. Duration: 50 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Michael Beckstead (Assoc. Prof, UTHSCSA) Carlos Paladini (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Matt Wanat (Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

Thursday, April 14, 2016 Laura Colgin (Center for Learning and Memory, UT Austin) returns to discuss hippocampal gamma band oscillations and their functional importance to memory encoding and retrieval. Duration: 37 minutes Discussants:(in alphabetical order) Brian Derrick (Prof, UTSA) Isabel Muzzio (Assoc. Prof, UTSA) Salma Quraishi (Res. Asst Prof, UTSA) Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA) acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.