2022/23 Neuroscience Research Colloquium Schedule

FALL 2022

SEPTEMBER 9 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE 

  • Host: Dr. Erin MacMillan
  • Speaker: Dr. Anke Henning, University of Texas
  • Title: Metabolic MRI at ultra-high fields – from systems architecture to application
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
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  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

Metabolic MRI allows observing energy metabolism, neurotransmission, second messaging, endocrine signaling, antioxidants, protein metabolism and dynamic membrane processes in the human brain. Related quantitative metabolic imaging biomarkers are beneficial for differential diagnostics, monitoring of treatment response and patient stratification in various neurological and psychiatric disorders and yield complementary information to structural and functional imaging. To visualize related metabolic processes my research group develops methodology for highly spatially and temporally resolved metabolic imaging exploiting magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) and non-proton spectroscopic imaging (31P, 13C, 2H) at 3T, 7T and 9.4T with application in the human brain, spinal cord and myocardium. These methods allows for non-invasive and non-ionizing determination of tissue concentrations and metabolic turn-over rates of more than 20 metabolites and ions and specifically benefits from ultrahigh field strength with regard to spectral resolution and signal-to-noise ratio.

However, specific physical and technical challenges have to be overcome to fully exploit the advantages of ultrahigh field MR at 7T and 9.4T for human MRI and MRS. Hence my laboratory invests into the development of enabling technology for ultrahigh field MRI including scan hardware such as radiofrequency coils and static magnetic field shimming, numerical optimization of these setups and is able to perform respective safety assessment to allow for application in humans. The lab also develops scan software including MRI sequences and is able to design tailored radiofrequency pulse including such dedicated to parallel transmission systems. Specifically for metabolic MRI we also develop tailored data analysis methods such as image reconstruction, post-processing and quantification pipelines and recently started to explore machine-learning based approaches.

This presentation gives an overview over our recent research activities.

SEPTEMBER 16 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE 

  • Host: Stefan Wendt
  • Speaker: Dr. Kim Green, University of California, Irvine
  • Title:  Exploring  microglia  function  in  the healthy and Alzheimer’s disease brain
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
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  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

Microglia are the primary immune cell of the brain, but have roles outside of immunity as well as being implicated in the pathogenesis of many CNS disorders. Here I will show how we can use CSF1R inhibitors to control the microglial population in vivo, and elucidate their functions in both the homeostatic and disease brains. I will focus on the involvement of microglia in Alzheimer’s disease, and also detail several new genetic models to understand the disease progression.

SEPTEMBER 23 – RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE “LIVE” SCREENING 

  • Host: Dr. Vesna Sossi
  • Speaker: Dr. Eugenii A. (Ilan) Rabiner, King’s College, London
  • Title: Molecular Imaging in CNS drug development
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  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

Over the past 25 years the costs of drug development have been rising steeply, with later phases being particularly resource intensive. Molecular imaging (primarily PET) has become an indispensable tool in early phase drug development, especially for compounds focused on CNS targets, PET studies conducted at an appropriate enable the refinement of the dose range to be explored in later phase studies, leading to time and resource savings, as well as providing early demonstration of compounds that are going to fail, leading to early termination and the reallocation of considerable resources. This talk will discuss the application of PET and MR imaging in early phase drug development, within the framework of the “three pillars” of drug development and provide examples of such studies.

OCTOBER 14 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE 

  • Host: Dr. Lynn Raymond
  • Speaker: Dr. Eric Yttri, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Title: Understanding brain-wide circuit dynamics underlying learned and spontaneous behavior with B-SOiD
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  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

For decades, neuroscience has focused almost exclusively on stereotyped, reductionist, and over-trained behaviors due to their ease of study. In contrast, naturalistic behavior provides a rich diversity of movements, but this feature also largely precludes it from quantification and use. Recent advances in computer vision have enabled automatic tracking of the position of body parts – but position is not behavior. To provide a bridge from positions to behaviors and their kinematics, we developed B-SOiD (Hsu and Yttri, Nature Communications). This open-source method discovers natural spatiotemporal patterns in body position data, then uses the cluster statistics to train a machine learning algorithm to classify behaviors that can generalize across subjects and labs. We will discuss the application of this user-friendly algorithm in flies, mice, and humans. Finally, we will share new data from recordings throughout the cortex and basal ganglia that reveal how these diverse behaviors are encoded by single units and interconnected neural populations.

OCTOBER 21 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE 

  • Host: Dr. Annie Ciernia
  • Speaker: Dr. Anthony Filiano, Duke University
  • Title: Regulating the Brain from Its Borders
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
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  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

The CNS is an immune-privileged organ, yet we know that peripheral immunity is critical for proper brain function. Here we will discuss cell communications in the meninges that regulate patrolling T cells and how the brain responds to T cell-derived signals.

OCTOBER 28 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE 

  • Host: Dr. Catharine Winstanley
  • Speaker: Dr. Mihaela Iordanova, Concordia University
  • Title: TBD
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
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  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

NOVEMBER 4 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE 

  • Host:
  • Speaker:
  • Title:

NOVEMBER 18 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE 

  • Host: Dr. Lynn Raymond
  • Speaker: Professors George Augustine, Lim  Kah Leong and Nagaendran Kandiah –  Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  • Title: TBD
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
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  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

NOVEMBER 25 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE 

  • Host: Jeff leDue
  • Speaker: Dr. Fabian Voigt, Harvard University
  • Title: TBD
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
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  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

DECEMBER 2 – IN PERSON AT RUDY NORTH LECTURE THEATRE 

  • Host: Dr. Paul Pavlidis
  • Speaker: Open Science Town Hall
  • Zoom option if unable to attend in person:
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  • Meeting ID: 99412 188589
  • Passcode: 188589

TERM 2 (WINTER 2023)

JANUARY 13

  • Host: Dr. Corree Laule
  • Speaker: Dr. Susan Gauthier, Weill Cornell Medical College
  • Title: TBD

JANUARY 20

  • Host: Dr. Kota Mizumoto
  • Speaker: Dr. Yuki Oka, California Institute of Technology
  • Title: TBD

JANUARY 27

  • Host: Dr. Liisa Galea
  • Speaker: Dr. Randy McIntosh, Simon Fraser University
  • Title: TBD

FEBRUARY 3

  • Host: Dr. Shernaz Bamji
  • Speaker: Dr. Anastassia Voronova, University of Alberta
  • Title: TBD

FEBRUARY 10

  • Host: Dr. Jeremy Seamans
  • Speaker: Dr. Alla Karpova, Janelia Research Campus
  • Title: TBD

FEBRUARY 17

  • Host: Dr. Lynn Raymond
  • Guest: Dr. Rosemary Bagot, McGill University
  • Title: TBD

FEBRUARY 24

  • Host: Maya Nesbit
  • Guest: Dr. Joni Wallis, University of California, Berkeley
  • Title: Neuronal mechanisms of value-based decision-making: a brain-machine interface approach

Decision-making is an unobservable cognitive process. This makes it challenging to investigate the underlying neuronal mechanisms. This lecture will discuss how techniques borrowed from the brain-machine interface field, such as decoding population activity and closed-loop control, can be used to understand how cognitive processes such as decision-making are implemented at the neuronal level. This approach could also lead to the development of novel devices for the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders that involve impaired decision-making.

MARCH 3

  • Host: Dr. Catharine Winstanley
  • Title:  UBC Kickstart Updates
  • Speakers:
  • Dr. Annie Ciernia: Mechanisms of Peripheral Lipopolysaccharide Induced Brain Inflammation
  • Dr. Lynn Raymond: Rethinking Neuro-Bioelectronic Systems: Sustainable, Stable and Self-healing fibers
  • Dr. Paul Van Donkelar: Characterizing tau pathology in survivors of intimate partner violence-related traumatic brain injury

MARCH 10

  • Host: Dr. Catharine Winstanley
  • Title: UBC Kickstart Updates
  • Speakers:
  • Dr. Brian MacVicar: A new target for aneurysmal SAH-induced vasospasm: P2Y14-dependent cerebral vessel constriction.
  • Dr. Rebecca Todd: Translational Investigation of Neurophysiological Substrates of Active and inhibitory Avoidance in healthy and depressed populations

MARCH 17

  • Host: Dr. Jason Snyder
  • Speaker: Dr. Michael Drew, University of Texas at Austin
  • Title: TBD

MARCH 24

  • Host: Giulio Laino Chiavegatti
  • Speaker: Dr. Kathleen Morrison, West Virginia University
  • Title: TBD

MARCH 31

  • Host: Dr. Lynn Raymond
  • Speaker: Dr. Joseph Cheer, University of Maryland
  • Title: TBD

APRIL 14

  • Host: Dr. Stan Floresco
  • Speaker: Dr. Jared Young, University of California, San Diego
  • Title: TBD

APRIL 21

  • Host: Dr. Mark Cembrowski
  • Speaker: Dr. Denise Cai, Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai
  • Title: TBD

APRIL 28

  • Host: Dr. Mark Cembrowski
  • Speaker: Dr. Stuart Trenholm, McGill University
  • Title: TBD

MAY 5

  • Host: Dr. Jacquie Quandt
  • Speaker: Dr. Yingxi Lin, Upstate Medical University, New York
  • Title:

MAY 12

  • Host: Dr. Doug Altshuler
  • Speaker: Dr. Richard Mooney, Duke University, North Carolina
  • Title: TBD

MAY 19

  • Host: Melanie Lysenko
  • Speaker: Dr. Ryan McLaughlin, Washington State University
  • Title: TBD

MAY 26

  • Host: Dr. Annie Ciernia
  • Speaker: Dr. Kasia Bieszczad, Rutgers University
  • Title: TBD

JUNE 2

  • Host: Dr. Kota Mizumoto
  • Speaker: Dr. Hokto Kazama, Riken Centre for Brain Science
  • Title: TBD

JUNE 9

  • Host: Dr. Eric Accili
  • Speaker: Dr. Emily Liman, University of  Southern California
  • Title: TBD