Dr. Krishnan Padmanabhan: "Studying the structure and function of human neural circuits across log scales of space and time"
~ Eligible for PSL1000H/PSL2000H/PSL4000Y Course Seminar Attendance ~
Speaker: Dr. Krishnan Padmanabhan
Associate Professor - Department of Neuroscience (SMD)
Associate Professor - Center for Visual Science A&S (RC) – Joint
University of Rochester Medical Center
Lab website link: https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/labs/neural-circuits-computation.aspx
Professional Background
Dr. Padmanabhan received his BS in Biology and History and his MS in Physiological Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University and was the Francis Crick-Irwin Jacobs Junior Fellow at the Salk Institute of Biological Studies before arriving at the University of Rochester.
Research
Dr. Padmanabhan's research aims to understand principles of neuronal function in the mammalian brain using experimental and computational methods with a focus on uncovering the biological bases of psychiatric disorders. Work in the Padmanabhan lab uses multi-electrode electrophysiology, induced-Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPSC) technology, imaging, and theoretical models to address three outstanding questions in neuroscience.
1) How does the brain represent features of the world via patterns of neuronal activity?
2) How does memory and experience shape the process of sensory perception?
3) How are these functions disrupted in neurological and psychiatric disorders?
Synopsis
Human cognition arises in part from the structure of cortical circuits. These circuits exhibit complexity across many log orders of scale (from microns to centimeters) and undergo changes over many log orders of time (from milliseconds to a 100 years). A goal of neuroscience is to study these circuits across different spatial and temporal scales. I will present recent work developing new experimental and computational methods for studying human neurons at single cell resolution across multiple spatial and temporal orders of scale. Using novel electrophysiology methods, we first characterized the emerge of complex population activity in human iPSC-derived networks using ideas from statistical physics. Following this, we developed a new framework for visualizing the structural maturation of human neural circuits in vivo using multi-photon imaging. Together, these approaches provide tools with which to study human circuits over development and to model disease processes across multiple spatio-temporal scales of organization.
Location: MS2172 (in-person only)