Assistant Professor  |  Neuroscience Platform

Etay Hay

PhD

Address
Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics, CAMH, 250 College St, room 1236, Toronto, Ontario Canada M5T 1R8
Research Interests
Computational neuroscience, cortical circuits, models, neuronal cell-types, connectivity, depression, schizophrenia
Accepting
Fellows, Graduates, Summer Students

Research Synopsis

Dr. Hay’s research uses computational models of cortical circuits to study the cellular and circuit mechanisms of cortical processing in health and disease. We are currently studying inhibitory connections in cortical circuits in depression and schizophrenia. We develop models of human cortical circuits by capitalizing on unique data from CAMH and Toronto Western Hospital, and study how altered inhibition affects cortical processing and oscillatory activity between cortical layers. In turn, we simulate electrode probes to characterize the signatures of the cellular effects in clinically-relevant brain electroencephalography signals. In addition, we use our computational platform to test in silico the effects of candidate pharmacology for depression developed at CAMH on human and rodent model circuits. Our research integrates unique human data to develop a computational platform to advance our understanding of cellular and circuit mechanisms of brain disorders, improve the ability to diagnose using brain recordings, and facilitate the translation of candidate therapeutics by testing in silico their effects on cortical circuits

Keywords

Electrophysiology, cortical circuits, models, synapses, inhibition, spiking, depression, sensory processing, oscillations, electroencephalography, neuronal cell-types, connectivity, depression, schizophrenia

Methods

Computational models, conductance-based models, neural networks, machine learning, simulations

Collaborators

Etienne Sibille, CAMH, University of Toronto
Taufik Valiante, Toronto Western Hospital, University of Toronto
Shreejoy Tripathy, CAMH, University of Toronto
John Griffiths, CAMH, University of Toronto

Trainees

Alexandre Guet-McCreight (Postdoc)
Frank Mazza (PhD)
Kant Yao (MSc)
Sana Rosanally (MSc)
Faraz Moghbel (MSc)
Taaha Hassan (Undergraduate)

Recent Publications

View Dr. Hay’s publications on Google Scholar

(https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=iircviMAAAAJ&hl=en)

Guet-McCreight A, Valiante TA, Hay E. Age-dependent increased sag current in human pyramidal neurons dampens baseline cortical activity. bioRxiv 2021

Mazza F, Griffiths JD, Hay E. EEG Biomarkers of reduced inhibition in human cortical microcircuits in depression. bioRxiv 2021

Yao HK, Guet-McCreight A, Mazza F, … Valiante TA, Sibille E, Hay E. Reduced inhibition in depression impairs stimulus processing in human cortical microcircuits. bioRxiv 2021

Hay E, Pruszynski JA. Orientation processing by synaptic integration across first-order tactile neurons. PLoS Comput Biol. 2020 Dec 2; 16 (12): e1008303

Appointments

Independent Scientist, Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics, CAMH
Cross-appointment in Physiology
Psychiatry (primary)
Temerty Centre for AI Research and Education in Medicine (member)
Max Planck – UofT (member)