2021/22 Neuroscience Research Colloquium Schedule

Fall 2021

SEPTEMBER 17 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE

  • Host: Jeff LeDue, UBC
  • Speakers: GPN CONP Scholars
  • Title: Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform Scholars Update
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
    Zoom link:  https://ubc.zoom.us/  (click on “Join a meeting”)
    Meeting ID:  95496 072083
    Passcode:  072083

OCTOBER 1 – RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE – “LIVE” SCREENING

  • Host: Dr. Annie Ciernia
  • Speaker: Dr. Ashley Kopec, Albany Medical College
  • Title: Sex-specific impact of immune signaling on adolescent neural and social development
  • Join in person in the auditorium or via the zoom option. The presenter will be remote.
  • Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID:  95496 072083
  • Passcode: 072083

In this presentation, Dr. Ashley Kopec will discuss published work examining the role of microglia, the resident immune cells in the brain, in neural and social development during adolescence in male and female rats. Then, she will discuss unpublished work aimed at understanding how opioid exposures during adolescence interact with microglia-mediated development to alter future reward-related behaviors.

There will be a virtual trainee meeting with Dr. Kopec immediately following her talk (~noon). If you would like to attend the trainee meeting please email annie.ciernia@ubc.ca to sign up. There are limited spots available on a first come first serve basis.

OCTOBER 8 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE

  • Host: Dr. Tim Murphy and Dr. Matthew Sacheli
  • Speakers: Dynamic Brain Circuits Cluster and the BC Brain Wellness Program
  • Title: Brain-Tech 2021 Hackathon: student teams innovation showcase
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
  • Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID:  95496 072083
  • Passcode:  072083

This colloquium will present innovation from the top student teams of the Brain-Tech 2021: Idea Generation and Hackathon for Brain Wellness. The Hackathon was hosted by the Dynamic Brain Circuits in Health and Disease Cluster, the BC Brain Wellness Program, and the Djavad  Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health. The Brain-Tech 2021 winners will discuss and demo their work which aims to improve brain wellness.

OCTOBER 15 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE

  • Host: Dr. Catharine Winstanley
  • Speaker: Sasha Wiley-Shaw, Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Office, UBC
  • Title: Preventing and Responding to Sexualized Violence
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
  • Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 95496 072083
  • Passcode: 072083

SVPRO will present UBC’s approach to preventing and responding to sexualized violence, with a focus on key principles for supporting survivors. The presentation will include what constitutes sexualized violence and prohibited relationships, standards and considerations for safe and respectful working and learning environments, and how to respond to a disclosure, with approaches to help mitigate impacts and reduce harm. This presentation is part one of a two-part series; part 2 (November 19) will focus on reporting options.

 OCTOBER 22 – RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE “LIVE” SCREENING

  • Host: Dr. Catharine Rankin
  • Speaker: Dr. Donald Wilson, New York University
  • Title: The olfactory mosaic: How diverse networks shape perception.
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
  • Zoom link here (Click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 95496 072083
  • Passcode: 072083

Our perception of the world begins with stimuli in the environment but is then dramatically shaped by our expectations, past experience, and internal state.  Olfactory perception is especially sensitive to these kinds of modulation.  In fact, input from a diverse network of brain regions conveying multisensory, homeostatic and experience-dependent information converges on the olfactory system as early as the first stages of odor processing.  This talk will describe our work over the past few years on how activity in non-olfactory regions shapes odor coding and perception.  What you smell is not necessarily what you get.

OCTOBER 29 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE

  • Host: Dr. Annie Ciernia
  • Speaker: Dr. David Gosselin, University of Laval
  • Title: Genome-wide approaches to understanding microglia identity and function
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
  • Zoom link here (Click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 95496-072083
  • Passcode: 072083

Microglia are the macrophages of the brain and participate to its development, homeostasis, and defense against pathogens and injuries. Notably, genetic evidence suggests that they are critically involved in neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease. However, our knowledge of the molecular processes that regulate these cells in the brain remains very rudimentary.

Over the past few years, we have concentrated our efforts on trying to understand how gene regulation is achieved in microglia. In particular, we provided evidence using mouse microglia that signaling factors in the brain provide important regulatory input that enable microglia to acquire their cellular identity. Importantly, our recent work on human microglia shows that axes of signaling pathways – transcription factors that shape the microglial epigenome and transcriptional characteristics are relatively well conserved between the mouse and human. My talk will provide an overview of these recent findings, and elaborate on the current approaches that we use to gain a better understanding of the epigenomic mechanisms underlying the different cellular functions of microglia in the brain.

NOVEMBER 5 – RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE “LIVE” SCREENING

  • Host: Dr. Jason Snyder
  • Speaker: Dr. Christine Denny, Columbia University
  • Title: Development of a whole-brain memory trace pipeline for activity-dependent tagging murine lines
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
  • Zoom link  here (Click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 95496 072083
  • Passcode: 072083

We previously created a mouse model to permanently label neurons activated during learning, the ArcCreERT2 mice (Denny et al., 2014, Neuron). In our first publication, we extensively characterized the ArcCreERT2 mice and manipulated various parameters to correlate behavioral expression with memory tagging. Using contextual fear conditioning (CFC), we showed that mice re-exposed to a fearful context freeze more and have a greater percentage of reactivated cells in the dentate gyrus (DG) and in CA3 than mice exposed to a novel context. Overall, we found that context, time, adult hippocampal neurogenesis, and stress impact cognition and mood, and these alterations are paralleled by changes in memory trace activation in the hippocampus. In our more recent studies, we have investigated how disease states and pharmacological manipulations impact memory traces (Perusini et al., 2017; Mastrodonato et al., 2018; Lacagnina et al., 2019; Leal Santos et al., 2021).

Our ongoing/planned projects are to identify: 1) how individual memories are stored throughout the entire brain using a novel whole-brain imaging pipeline we have recently developed, 2) how multiple memories are co-stored throughout the brain using a new activity-dependent viral strategy, and 3) how disease states impact memories, often resulting in memory loss.

NOVEMBER 19 -IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE

  • Host: Dr. Catharine Winstanley
  • Speaker: Sasha Wiley-Shaw, Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Office, UBC
  • Title: Reporting Options for Sexualized Violence
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
  • Zoom link here (Click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 95496 072083
  • Passcode: 072083

SVPRO is back for a second session! This session will focus on the different options that are available for reporting when sexualized violence has occurred. Not everyone wants to report after being impacted by sexualized violence, and that’s completely okay. When folks do want to report, it’s important that they know the full range of options and considerations. Join us to learn about UBC systems, police reporting, and human rights reporting systems, when each may apply, and how SVPRO supports people navigating these processes.

NOVEMBER 26 – THE TALK FOR TODAY HAS BEEN CANCELLED – IT WILL BE RESCHEDULED FOR DECEMBER 17

  • Host: Dr. Tim Murphy
  • Speaker: Dr. Majid Mohajerani, University of Lethbridge/UBC
  • Title:  Spontaneous activity, memory replay, and the default mode network.

DECEMBER 3 – RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE “LIVE” SCREENING

  • Host: Dr. Annie Ciernia
  • Speaker: Dr. Tamara Franklin, Dalhousie University
  • Title: The effects of maternal immune activation on early development in an outbred strain of mice.
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
  • Zoom link here (Click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 95496 072083
  • Passcode: 072083

Dr. Franklin’s lab is interested in the neural bases for social function, and they use mouse models for diseases that have social deficits at their core. This talk will present their recent work looking at postnatal development, juvenile behaviours and autophagy in a mouse model of perinatal infection.

There will be a virtual lunch with trainees following the talk (~noon). If you are interested in attending the trainee virtual lunch, please RSVP to Dr. Annie Ciernia (annie.ciernia@ubc.ca) by Monday, Nov 29th at 5pm. Spots are limited and first come first serve.

DECEMBER 10 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE

  • Host: Dr. Shernaz Bamji
  • Speaker: Dr. Jessica Rosin, UBC
  • Title: Unraveling microglial heterogeneity and stress responses in the embryonic hypothalamus
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
  • Zoom link here (Click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 95496 072083
  • Passcode: 072083

The hypothalamus is a powerful brain region that is responsive to external stressors and is critical for maintaining homeostatic processes, including energy balance, thermoregulation, circadian rhythm, mood, and reproduction. Microglia, the resident macrophages and phagocytic immune cells of the brain, survey their environment, respond to insults, and dispose of cellular debris. Microglia can also sense external inputs (e.g., infection, stress, etc.), causing them to interact with neighboring cells to control their local environment. The interplay between hypothalamic neurons and microglia as they integrate stressors to regulate homeostasis is of growing interest. We asked if embryonic hypothalamic microglia were stress responsive and, if so, whether their precocious activation perturbs nearby neural stem cell programs. Our findings suggest that immature hypothalamic microglia play an unappreciated role in translating maternal stressors to sexually dimorphic perturbation of neurodevelopmental programs. 

DECEMBER 17 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE

  • Host: Dr. Tim Murphy
  • Speaker: Dr. Majid Mohajerani, University of Lethbridge/UBC
  • Title: Spontaneous activity, memory replay, and the default mode network.
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
  • Zoom link here (Click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 95496 072083
  • Passcode: 072083

Spontaneous activity accounts for most of what the brain does and is likely to be key for information processing in the brain, but its function is still quite mysterious. Two key spontaneous activity processes are the Default Mode Network (DMN), a set of areas that are most markedly connected and active during behavioural idleness, and memory replay, the spontaneous reactivation of neural patterns occurring during experience. In the Mohajerani lab, we test the hypothesis that the DMN plays a key role in memory replay processes. This theory, if confirmed, would bring important conceptual advances: to memory studies, as it would provide a mechanism supporting the formation and consolidation of complex memory representations. I will explore this theory by our ongoing studies of neural activity over the whole mouse cortex in animals running memory tasks.

TERM 2 (WINTER 2022)

JANUARY 14 – This talk has been cancelled

JANUARY 21 – This talk has been cancelled.

JANUARY 28 – This talk has been cancelled.

 

FEBRUARY 4 – VIA ZOOM

  • Host: Dr. Helen Tremlett
  • Speaker: Dr. John Kramer, UBC
  • Title:  Translational Research in Acute Spinal Cord Injury
  • Zoom link here 
  • Meeting ID: 667 6015 7670
  • Meeting passcode: 645470

FEBRUARY 11 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE

  • Host: Dr. Catharine Winstanley
  • Speaker: Dr. Cheryl Wellington, UBC
  • Title: Fluid biomarkers in neurology: Clinical and translational studies
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person
  • Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

Diseases of the brain are among the most challenging disorders to diagnose and treat. Unlike cancer, where human tissue biopsy specimens are routinely collected, brain disorders lack routine access to specimens that are essential to make progress in understanding pathophysiology and developing effective treatments. Currently, most brain diseases are studied in living patients using neuroimaging or invasive cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) collection. New technologies now allow brain-derived substances to be measured in blood, which is revolutionizing the field of neurology. The Wellington lab is currently collaborating with several local neurologists to develop and validate blood biomarkers for several acute and chronic neurological conditions. Highlights of our studies in Alzheimer’s Disease, spinal cord injury and hypoxic ischemic brain injury will be presented. We are also present our program to develop and validate parallel assays that work in rodents to better understand the translational relevance of studies in animal models.

 

FEBRUARY 18 – RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE – “LIVE” SCREENING

  • Host:  Dr. Lara Boyd/Ronan Denyer
  • Speaker: Dr. Jorn Diedrichsen, Western University
  • Title: Exploring the role of the human cerebellum across functional domains
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person
  • Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

The cerebellum has evolved to support basic sensory-motor functions. In the human brain, the cerebellar circuitry has dramatically expanded and contributes to virtually every cognitive function, including working memory, language, and social cognition. Given its uniform cytoarchitecture, it has long been hypothesized that the cerebellar circuit performs a common computation across all these functional domains. But what is this elusive transform? To ultimately answer this question we require a better understanding of the functional diversity of the cerebellum, it’s connectivity to the neocortex, and the relationship between cortical and cerebellar processes in each functional domain. I will present results from a number functional neuroimaging studies to characterize cerebellar function across cognitive domains to start to address these questions in a systematic fashion.

FEBRUARY 25 – This talk has been cancelled

MARCH 4 – This talk has been cancelled

MARCH 11 – RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE “LIVE” SCREENING

  • Host: Dr. Jason Snyder
  • Speaker: Dr. Rutsuko Ito, University of Toronto
  • Title: Ventral hippocampal circuits and the arbitration of approach-avoidance conflict
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person
  • Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

Approach-avoidance (AA) conflict resolution is a form of decision making that is fundamentally important for survival and requires the effective evaluation of affective stimuli or events with mixed outcomes (positive and negative). Despite the prevailing view of hippocampal involvement in learning and memory processes, the hippocampus is also thought to be involved in the resolution of AA conflict by exaggerating the value of negative outcomes and increasing the tendency to avoid. Furthermore, work from my laboratory has implicated the ventral, but not the dorsal hippocampus, in mediating affective processes involving learned AA conflict. In this talk, I will be presenting a set of studies providing evidence of ventral hippocampal (vHPC) mediation of AA decision making when animals are exposed to affectively bivalent (conflicting) cues. I will also present chemogenetic evidence that the control over conflict-elicited AA  behaviours is subfield, and pathway-specific, with the investigation extending to the wider extrinsic connectivity of the vHPC with the lateral septum and ventral striatum.

MARCH 18 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE

  • Host: Dr. Stan Floresco
  • Speaker: Dr. Kate Wassum, UCLA
  • Title: Amygdala circuitry in reward learning and decision making
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person
  • Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

To make adaptive decisions we must cast ourselves into the future and consider the outcomes of our potential choices. This prospective consideration is informed by our memories. I will discuss our lab’s recent work investigating the neural circuits responsible for encoding, updating, and retrieving reward memories for use in the considerations underlying decision making. We have taken a multifaceted approach to these investigations, combining recording, modern circuit dissection, and behavioral tools. Our results are generally indicating that the basolateral amygdala, midbrain, and orbitofrontal cortex work in a circuit to participate in these functions. The cognitive symptoms underlying many psychiatric disorders result from a failure to appropriately learn about and/or anticipate potential future events, making these basic science data relevant to the understanding and potential treatment of mental illness.

 

MARCH 25 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE

  • Host: Dr. Janet Werker and the UBC Language Sciences Initiative
  • Speaker: Dr. Edward F. Chang, University of California, San Francisco
  • Title: Towards a Speech Neuroprosthetic
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person
  • Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

Speaking is a unique and defining human behavior.  Over the past decade, we have focused on deciphering the basic neural code that underlies our ability to speak fluently.

During speech production, vocal tract movement gestures for all speech sounds are encoded by highly specialized neural activity, organized as a map, in the human speech motor cortex.   A major effort is now underway to translate these findings towards building an articulatory-based speech neuroprosthetic device for people who cannot communicate.

 

APRIL 1 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE

  • Host: Dr. Timothy Murphy
  • Speaker: Dr. Bojana Stefanovic, University of Toronto
  • Title: Neurovascular unit dysfunction in a model of TBI
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person
  • Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is the most common type of traumatic brain injury globally. Although its consequences may be short term, mTBI often leads to long-term neuropsychiatric and neurological impairments and has been estimated to increase the probability of later life dementia up to six-fold. It is presently not clear what neuropathological changes underlie these deficits. This talk will review our recent studies on the sustained neurogliovascular unit function changes in a murine model of repeated, mild traumatic brain injury. By leveraging two photon fluorescence microscopy, intracerebral electrophysiological recordings, optogenetics, high field magnetic resonance imaging, and light sheet fluorescence microscopy, we reveal pronounced, lasting, and diffuse changes in the neuronal and cerebrovascular functional signals in situ, accompanied by only subtle changes in histopathological readouts and no changes on conventional neuroimaging. Our studies suggest the potential of disinhibitory interventions to ameliorate peri-contusional neuronal and cerebrovascular tone and reactivity. In light of known import of functional hyperemia for healthy brain functioning, normalization of the neurovascular unit function is likely key for decreasing the susceptibility of the concussed brain to subsequent pathologies. We expect sensitive in situ functional assays to be instrumental for development of such neurovascularly targeted interventions in the clinic.

APRIL 8 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE – Please note this talk will be from 12:00pm – 1:00pm

  • Host: Dr. Kota Mizumoto
  • Speaker: Dr. Shigeki Watanabe, Johns Hopkins University
  • Title: Ultrafast recycling of synaptic vesicles
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person
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  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

In 1973 John Heuser and Tom Reese demonstrated that neurotransmitter was released from neurons via the fusion of neurotransmitter-filled vesicles with the cell membrane.  But at the same time, these experiments launched a controversy that is unresolved today – do vesicles collapse into the membrane and are then recycled slowly on the order of 20 seconds? Or do they retain their existence – and reverse the pore in just 1 second, as proposed in ‘kiss and run’ endocytosis?  Since then, molecular pathways for fusion and recycling have been put forward, but the field remains divided.  We have used channelrhodopsin to stimulate neurons in intact nematodes and in cultured hippocampal neurons.  The specimen is then frozen 15 ms to 20 seconds after the stimulus. To our surprise, we observed a different form of vesicle recycling that is ultrafast, in which membrane is endocytosed at lateral edges of active zones between 30-100 ms after stimulation.  The large endocytic vesicles then fuse to form an endosome and are resolved by clathrin into synaptic vesicles. Although rapid, several molecules coordinately mediate ultrafast endocytosis. I will discuss the findings from the original studies and our current work on molecular mechanisms underlying ultrafast endocytosis.

APRIL 22 –  RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE “LIVE” SCREENING

  • Host: Hong Lu
  • Speaker: Dr. Pascal Kaeser, Harvard University
  • Title: Mechanisms and Roles for Fast Dopamine Signaling
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person
  • Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

Dopamine is a neuromodulator that codes information on various time scales. I will discuss recent progress on the identification of fast release mechanisms for dopamine in the mouse striatum. I will present data on triggering mechanisms of dopamine release and evaluate its roles in striatal regulation. In the long-term, our work will allow for a better understanding of the mechanisms and time scales of dopamine coding in health and disease.

APRIL 29 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE

  • Host: Dr. Jason Snyder
  • Speaker: Dr. Nelson Spruston, Janelia Research Campus, Virginia
  • Title: Neurophysiological mechanisms of memory guided behavior
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person
  • Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

Mammals use a sophisticated, multi-regional memory system to guide behavior. A major goal of neuroscience is to understand the mechanisms—ranging from molecular to cellular to systems—that make this possible. Spruston will describe recent results from his lab using mouse behavior, patch-clamp recording, imaging, and RNA-seq, which collectively seek to elucidate how a diverse and complex population of neurons in the hippocampus allow mice to perform sophisticated memory guided behaviors.

MAY 6 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE

  • Host: Dr. Annie Ciernia
  • Speaker: Dr. Elizabeth Heller, University of Pennsylvania
  • Title: Epigenetic regulation of reward pathophysiology
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person
  • Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

The Heller Lab research program is focused on discovering molecular mechanisms by which epigenetic reprogramming contributes to neuropsychiatric disease. To this end, Dr. Heller pioneered the use of targeted epigenetic editing in brain, to elucidate the precise causal role of histone posttranslational modifications on gene expression and alternative splicing in specific neuronal subpopulations. Dr. Heller will share recent studies of epigenetic regulation of gene expression and alternative splicing across cocaine abstinence in mice, as well as novel approaches to examine histone modifications in specific neuronal subpopulations.

MAY 13 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE

  • Hosts:  Dr. Michael Kobor, Social Exposome Cluster & Dr. Janet Werker, Department of Psychology
  • Speaker: Dr. Takao Hensch, Harvard University
  • Title: Balancing Brain Plasticity/Stability
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person
  • Zoom link here (click on “Join a meeting”)
  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

Brain function is largely shaped by experience in early life, creating windows of both great opportunity and vulnerability. Our work has focused on the biological basis for such critical periods, identifying both “triggers” and “brakes” on plasticity. Strikingly, the maturation of particular inhibitory circuits is pivotal for the onset timing of these windows. Manipulations of their emergence can either accelerate or delay developmental trajectories regardless of chronological age. Notably, many neurodevelopmental disorders are linked to alterations in excitatory-inhibitory balance, suggesting shifted critical period timing as part of their etiology. Closure of critical periods in turn reflects an active process, rather than a purely passive loss of plasticity factors. Lifting these brakes allows the reopening of plastic windows later in life, but may also underlie instability in disease states. Thus, understanding how brain plasticity and stability are balanced throughout life offers new insight into mental illness and novel therapeutic strategies for recovery of function in adulthood.