Event Details:
Join us at Gunn Rotunda in the Stanford Neurosciences Building to learn about the latest cutting-edge, cross-disciplinary brain research, from biochemistry to behavior and beyond
Wu Tsai Neuro's weekly seminar series is back to being held in-person since Fall 2022. Masking is strongly encouraged for the health and safety of our community Join the speaker for coffee, cookies, and conversation after the talk
Making sense of touch
Abstract
Our relationship with the physical world is rich, complex, and essential for virtually all aspects of life. How does the nervous system encode component dimensions of a tactile stimulus –pressure, sharpness, vibratory frequency, roughness, wetness, adhesiveness, and compliance– and superimpose these dimensions with respect to stimulus location on the body, and direction and speed of stimulus movement? In this lecture I will describe our work addressing the form underlying function of cutaneous mechanoreceptors, which are the primary sensory neurons of touch. I will also describe recent insights into the central representation of touch and the functional organization of the subcortical somatosensory system.
David Ginty
Harvard University
David Ginty is the Edward R. and Anne G. Lefler Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received his PhD degree in physiology from East Carolina University and did postdoctoral research on neuronal signaling mechanisms at Harvard Medical School. In 1995 he became a faculty member in the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In 2013 he returned to Harvard Medical School to join the Department of Neurobiology. Research in the Ginty laboratory explores the properties and functions of mechanosensory neurons whose mechanosensitive endings are embedded in the skin as well as the functional organization of the subcortical touch circuitry and its role in the neural encoding of touch and mechanical pain, in health and disease. The lab also investigates development of the somatosensory system, following the assumption that if we know how it’s built, we can better understand how it works. David is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research awards include co-recipient of Columbia University’s Alden Spencer Award (2017, shared with Ardem Patapoutian), the 2021 Julius Axelrod Prize from the Society for Neuroscience, and the 2022 Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience from MIT. He has served as a council member for NINDS and director (Johns Hopkins) and associate director (Harvard) of neuroscience graduate programs.
Hosted by - Miriam Goodman
About the Wu Tsai Neuro Seminar Series
The Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute seminar series brings together the Stanford neuroscience community to discuss cutting-edge, cross-disciplinary brain research, from biochemistry to behavior and beyond.
Topics include new discoveries in fundamental neurobiology; advances in human and translational neuroscience; insights from computational and theoretical neuroscience; and the development of novel research technologies and neuro-engineering breakthroughs.
Unless otherwise noted, seminars are held Thursdays at 12:00 noon PT.