Science at the Edge Seminar
Friday January 13th, 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
fax 517.432.8802