Event Details:
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Pain, emotion, and body schema
Abstract
I will discuss two main topics in my seminar. The first is about pain especially the emotional aspect of pain. Pain is inseparable from the negative emotions, and emotions are inseparable from body’s autonomic/physiological responses. We show that different pain elicits both shared and distinct autonomic responses that can be quantitatively measured. Furthermore, distinct central neurons that change the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic activities can suppress or enhance pain. We also find that the central autonomic neural network is also involved in generating the nocebo effect. The second topic is about brain’s representation of the body’s configuration in 3D space. You can effortlessly bring a cup of coffee to your mouth even with eyes closed. How does the hand “know” where the mouth is in the 3D space? By tracking all joint angles in freely behaving mice with concurrent in vivo recording from sensory and associative cortex, we have identified neural substrates for posture and action awareness.
Fan Wang
Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Dr. Fan Wang is currently an Investigator of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She obtained her Ph.D. from Columbia University working with Dr. Richard Axel, and received postdoctoral training at UCSF and Stanford University with Dr. Marc Tessier-Lavigne. She became a faculty member at Duke University in 2003 and was appointed Morris N. Broad Professor of Neurobiology at Duke University before moving to MIT in January 2021. Dr. Wang made important contributions to neural mechanisms underlying general anesthesia, touch and pain perception, and movement control. For her achievements, Dr. Wang was awarded an Alfred Sloan Fellowship, a Klingenstein Fellowship in Neuroscience, a McKnight Scholarship in Neuroscience, two NIH Pioneer Awards, and a Keck Foundation research award. She is an AAAS Fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Hosted by - Xiaoke Chen (Xiaoke Chen Lab)
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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.
Unless otherwise noted, seminars are held Thursdays at 12:00 noon PT.
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