Science at the Edge Seminar

Friday January 13^th, 2017

11:30 a.m., Room 1400 BPS Bldg.

Speaker Mark Reimers MSU

 

The BRAIN Initiative: Big Data Comes to Neuroscience

 

High-throughput data is revolutionizing neuroscience, as microarrays revolutionized genomics fifteen years ago. The BRAIN initiative in the US and similar efforts around the world will soon allow us to eavesdrop on the conversations among thousands or millions of neurons. This talk will introduce some of the technologies that are changing the face of neuroscience, illustrate some of the insights that have been gained recently, and expand on the promise to come, drawing on recently published work as well as the speaker's own research.

 

I will first briefly survey the surprising diversity of brain cells, and then describe the new optical technologies to measure brain activity. After decades of steady slow improvement in electrical and magnetic measurement, the capacity and resolution of optical imaging methods are more than doubling each year. Other optical technologies enable precise interventions in circuits.

 

I will then describe a few recent findings using these technologies: how memories are formed and recalled; how skills can be selectively erased; what imagination may look like; how perceptual decisions are made; how apparently false memories can be implanted in animals. 

 

 

 

Michigan State University

Dept. Physics and Astronomy

Shawna Prater-CHRS

Secretary for Astrophysics/CMP Theory

POC for Physics SATE seminars/COLLOQUIUM

3261BPS, 567 Wilson Road

East Lansing, MI 48824-6405

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fax 517.432.8802