Spring Semester 2009-2010

For Spring semester 2009-2010, the Behavioral, Computational, and Systems Neuroscience (BCS) Journal Club will meet on Tuesdays from 12:00 to 1:15 pm in Uris Hall 205. 

The overarching theme this semester is Oscillations.  Adhering to this theme is not required, but recommended.  Please interpret it broadly. Theories of gamma, beta, and theta oscillations in the nervous system are the centroid of intent, but alpha, sleep, circadian, etc. rhythms are also spot-on as are reasonably accessible dynamical systems topics from math and engineering. 

To add yourself to the BCS-L mailing list, send a plain-text email to bcs-L-request@cornell.edu with the body of the message saying simply join.  The subject line doesn't matter.  Sending the message leave instead will unsubscribe you from the list.  See Cornell's Lyris HowTo page for further details. 

Please contact Thomas Cleland with any questions (David Smith is on walkabout this semester).  BCS meeting archive.

26 January 2010:  Organizational Meeting

• No readings.

2 February 2010:  Thomas Cleland

• Fries, Nikolic, and Singer (2007).  The gamma cycle.  Trends in Neurosciences.  
• Optional/supplementary:  Dan and Poo (2004).  Spike Timing-Dependent Plasticity of Neural Circuits.  Review in Neuron.

In discussion, Patrick brought up Li et al (2004), a paper from Mu-ming Poo's lab showing that those presynaptic neurons that spike early, and that consequently (via STDP) have their synaptic weights upon a postsynaptic neuron strengthened, are also themselves rendered more excitable. That is, by this mechanism STDP can "work on the presynaptic neuron" as well as on its output synapse. The net effect of this can be to durably group a set of early-firing neurons together into a fully synchronous ensemble evoking activity in that postsynaptic cell.

9 February 2010:  Christina Sill

• Hasselmo, Giocomo, and Yoshida (2009).  Cellular dynamical mechanisms for encoding the time and place of events along spatiotemporal trajectories in episodic memory.  Behavioral Brain Research. 
  

16 February 2010:  Patrick Gill

• Fusi, Drews, and Abbott (2005).  Cascade models of synaptically stored memories.  Neuron.

23 February 2010:  NO MEETING

•  No Meeting.  If you come, nobody will be there except for you. 

2 March 2010:  Helene Porte

• Mahon, Vautrelle, et al (2006). Distinct patterns of striatal medium spiny neuron activity during the natural sleep-wake cycle.  J. Neuroscience.
  

9 March 2010:  Sasha Devore

• Schroeder et al. (2008).  Neuronal oscillations and visual amplification of speech.  Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 

In discussion, Guoshi brought up this modeling paper analyzing the property that visual input (lip reading) facilitates auditory input most effectively under moderate noise conditions. 

16 March 2010:  Thomas Cleland

• Fries (2005).  A mechanism for cognitive dynamics:  neuronal communication through neuronal coherence.  Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 

• Schoffelen, Oostenveld, and Fries (2005).  Neuronal coherence as a mechanism of effective corticospinal interaction.  Science. 

23 March 2010:  SPRING BREAK

• No meeting.

30 March 2010:  SiWei Luo

• TBD.
  

6 April 2010:  Guoshi Li

• TBD.

13 April 2010:  Anuttama Sheela Mohan

• TBD.

20 April 2010:  Shane Peace and Ben Johnson

• Results from planar-array multielectrode slice recordings of gamma oscillations in the mouse olfactory bulb.
  

27 April 2010:  TBD

4 May 2010:  Mike Wojnowicz

• TBD.