Event Details:
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Of Molecules and Minds: Can understanding acetylcholine help us understand attention?
Abstract
The release of ‘neuromodulatory’ signaling molecules – such as acetylcholine, serotonin, and norepinephrine - is ubiquitous across neural circuits in all species. In working to understand the role(s) that these molecules play, it has been common to ask what each molecule ‘does’, resulting in a narrative in which modulatory molecules serve as biological proxies for cognitive or computational concepts such as ‘surprise’, ‘arousal’, ‘attention’, and ‘uncertainty’. Using acetylcholine as an example, I describe a series of experiments – some complete, some in progress - designed to understand whether and how one might bridge the enormous gap from molecule to cognition/computation, in rhesus monkeys; a highly translationally-relevant species. Acetylcholine has been implicated in various cognitive processes; I will focus on ‘attention’, using altered processing of sensory data in the primary visual cortex as a model.
Anita Disney
Duke University
Bio coming soon.
Hosted by - Juliane Krueger (Data-Driven Modeling and Simulations Group)
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About the Wu Tsai Neurosciences 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.
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