Seminars

Shantanu Jadhav presents work on coordinated hippocampal-prefrontal activity and the neural mechanisms that support memory-guided cognition and decisions. The seminar draws on systems electrophysiology and circuit analysis to connect distributed network dynamics with behavior.

Takaki Komiyama will discuss how cortical circuits maintain information about the value of behavioral options across trials and transform past experience into future choices. The talk draws on longitudinal imaging and circuit manipulation in mice to examine distinct neuronal populations and local and long-range interactions in history-dependent decision-making.

This public discussion examines the factors that help preserve brain health during aging. Researchers working on neuroscience, brain stimulation, the microbiome and brain health consider how stress, everyday behavior and social and environmental conditions can affect resilience over a lifetime. The panel discusses emerging evidence about early vulnerability, possible interventions through lifestyle changes and stress management, and more targeted approaches. It also addresses the limits of current knowledge and the uncertainties that remain when translating these findings into ways to protect cognitive health.

Navigation and memory require coordination between map-like allocentric representations and body-centered egocentric actions. Aaron Wilber examines how the parietal–retrosplenial–anterior thalamic–hippocampal network performs these transformations, and how disrupted coordination contributes to spatial deficits in aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Rat sequence-task experiments reveal bidirectional hippocampal–parietal interactions across route-centered, place and egocentric representations. Because that task does not isolate reference-frame use, the laboratory developed a freely available task separating egocentric, allocentric and transformation conditions. Validation indicates that parietal cortex and anterior thalamus are required for transformation; ongoing work examines population states associated with each condition. The talk then connects impaired hippocampal–cortical communication during sleep to navigation deficits in 3xTg-AD mice, reporting recovery of circuit function and cognition after early, circuit-targeted 40 Hz entrainment. Related investigations examine this network during waking navigation. In TgF344-AD rats, egocentric impairments appear before transformation deficits, addressing the shortage of rodent studies of reference-frame coordination in Alzheimer’s disease.

Anthony Letai discusses how understanding programmed cell death can guide the selection of cancer treatments. The seminar explains how apoptotic signalling can be measured and how these measurements can identify drugs capable of killing cancer cells. Hybrid: New Research Building Auditorium, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC, and Zoom. Monday 5 October 2026, 16:30–17:30 EDT (America/New_York; UTC−4). Use the attendance registration form or the event’s Zoom link on the organizer page. Organized by Georgetown’s Distinguished Scientist Seminar Series. Letai is Director of the National Cancer Institute. An in-person reception follows the seminar.

Picower Institute Colloquium on the Brain and Cognition featuring Christopher Harvey, PhD, of Harvard University, held in Singleton Auditorium (46-3002) at MIT Building 46, 43 Vassar Street.

Ivo D. Dinov examines augmented intelligence as a partnership between people and computational systems. The talk traces the technical and philosophical development of neural networks, then introduces complex-time, or kime, representations and the inference methods they support. Applications include medical imaging, healthcare and economic forecasting. It also considers the academic mission, societal consequences of AI and tensions between rapid technical development and human values, framing mathematical AI methods as extensions of human reasoning. Free hybrid seminar hosted by Wayne State University's Institute for AI and Data Science, AIDaS: CAD Seminar Series. Wednesday 30 September 2026, 14:30–15:30 EDT (America/Detroit; UTC−4). Attend in Room 1146, Faculty/Administration Building, 656 W. Kirby, Detroit, MI 48202, USA, or use the Zoom link on the official event page. Researchers, practitioners, students and faculty are welcome; the organizer encourages in-person attendance.

Peter Meikle, Bernie Pope and Tingting Wang present the Australian Cardiovascular disease Data Commons (ACDC). Some heart attacks occur without established risk factors, and repeat events remain common despite optimal treatment. ACDC addresses this gap by securely pooling multi-omics, imaging and longitudinal outcomes from approximately 400,000 people in 18 Australian cohorts. The webinar explains cloud infrastructure, data harmonisation and federated standards based on Gen3; how integrated genomic, multi-omics and imaging cohorts support new risk markers and polygenic risk-score testing; and how the platform can move diagnostic research towards clinical practice. Meikle and Wang are at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute; Pope is at Australian BioCommons. Online via Zoom. Wednesday 30 September 2026, 12:00–13:00 AEST (Australia/Melbourne; UTC+10). Free, with advance registration through the official event page. Intended for life scientists, bioinformaticians, cardiovascular clinicians, data custodians and medical data scientists. Parts may be recorded; the Australian BioCommons Code of Conduct applies. Organized by Australian BioCommons.

Mansi Chhajed examines how the move from home sleep patterns to disrupted hospital sleep relates to cognitive outcomes after surgery. The session combines longitudinal sleep measurements with clinical assessments of postoperative delirium to identify baseline markers of vulnerability and consider practical ways to improve recovery. It connects sleep architecture, biological and environmental influences, and preoperative risk with proactive, sleep-informed patient care. Chhajed is a Clinical Research Coordinator at Massachusetts General Hospital. Online via Zoom Webinar. Tuesday 29 September 2026 at 14:00 ET / 13:00 CT (America/New_York; EDT, UTC−4). Organized by the Sleep Research Society — Virtual Seminar Series. Follow Register Today on the organizer's page to the event-specific Zoom form, which requests name and email. The form is publicly accessible; advance registration supplies webinar access.

Vanessa Siffredi explores why the corpus callosum is central to typical brain development, yet some children born without it or with callosal abnormalities develop comparably to their peers. The talk connects callosal structure and communication between hemispheres with cognition, attention, executive function, memory, language and socio-emotional development. Structural and functional neuroimaging studies of typical development and callosal dysgenesis examine how developing brains compensate for alterations in this major white-matter pathway. Siffredi is affiliated with CHUV and UNIL; Carole Guedj chairs the seminar. Hybrid: Auditoire de pédiatrie Fred Bamatter, HUG, Hôpital des Enfants, Geneva; online via Zoom. Tuesday 29 September 2026, 09:30–10:30 CEST (Europe/Zurich; UTC+2), followed by CIBM news and networking until 11:00. Organized by CIBM Center for Biomedical Imaging — Breakfast and Science. In-person attendance is free without registration. Remote attendees must register through the Zoom link on the event page and select the 29 September occurrence.

Merav Ahissar examines how expertise emerges through learning the statistics of task-relevant stimuli. Slow learning builds familiarity with stable regularities, such as syllable patterns in language, while fast adaptation supports flexible responses to changing situations, including surprising social interactions. The talk considers atypical learning dynamics in dyslexia and autism and how these may explain difficulties in linguistic and social skill acquisition, respectively. The discussion draws on Gertsovski and Ahissar, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2026. Speaker: Merav Ahissar, Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Organized by Cornell Cognitive Science. Friday 25 September 2026, 15:00–16:30 America/New_York (EDT). Attend online through the public Join via Zoom link on the official event page; the link opens Zoom’s app and browser join options. Cornell advertises the source event as hybrid, but this listing covers the verified online attendance route.

Mark Harnett presents work on how synaptic organization, nonlinear dendritic processing, and neuronal activity patterns interact to support computation, flexibility, and learning in the adult mammalian neocortex. The Brain and Cognitive Sciences colloquium is followed by a reception.

Farhad Danesh examines how mitochondrial reactive oxygen species, altered metabolism and structural remodelling convert hyperglycaemia into progressive kidney injury. The seminar connects mitochondrial dynamics with diabetic microvascular damage, non-coding RNA regulation and experimental models that establish causal links to disease progression. Genome-wide CRISPR screens and spatial metabolomics reveal cellular gene-regulatory and metabolic changes. Integrating these approaches with molecular genetics, genomics and epigenomics, the work seeks therapeutic targets to prevent diabetic kidney disease progressing to kidney failure. Hybrid: New Research Building Auditorium, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC, and Zoom. Thursday 24 September 2026, 16:00–17:00 EDT (America/New_York; UTC−4). Use the public event registration form to arrange attendance, or follow its Zoom link for remote participation. Organized by Georgetown’s Distinguished Scientist Seminar Series. Danesh is Professor of Medicine and Chief of Nephrology at MD Anderson.

Bowen Li explains how ionizable lipids are designed for lipid nanoparticles that deliver messenger RNA. The seminar covers combinatorial and machine-learning-guided design, four-component reactions for rapidly producing lipid libraries, and barcoded screening in living systems to identify formulations targeting organs and cells, including lungs, T cells and tumours. It then examines applications of AI-guided nanoparticle platforms to mRNA therapeutics. Li is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto's Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy. Online via Zoom. Thursday 24 September 2026, 11:00–12:00 Eastern Daylight Time (America/New_York; UTC−4). Use Join via Zoom on Western University's event page. The stated audience includes researchers, students, alumni and the general public. Organized by Western University's Western Bioinformatics Research Seminar.

Bryce Mander presents research on early sleep biomarkers associated with Alzheimer's disease pathophysiology and memory impairment. The William C. Dement Seminar connects sleep and circadian neuroscience with neurodegeneration, cognition and clinically relevant approaches to detecting disease-related change.

Stanford Neurosciences Seminar Series talk by Emery Brown (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Neuroscience Statistics Research Lab) on deciphering the dynamics of the unconscious brain under general anesthesia, hosted by the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute.

Daphna Shohamy and Ashok Litwin-Kumar bridge experimental and computational neuroscience to explain how the brain assigns significance to memories, how dopamine shapes memory-guided decisions, and how bodily signals influence learning. Isabel Low moderates a public discussion and question session.

Tal Linzen, an associate professor of linguistics and data science at New York University and a research scientist at Google, will speak in MIT's Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence seminar series. His work combines behavioral experiments and computational methods to study language learning and comprehension, alongside large-language-model post-training, evaluation, and interpretability.

Yuko Munakata presents evidence challenging capacity-only accounts of self-control and explains how experience, effort, and expected payoff shape executive-function engagement and later outcomes.

Elena Fuentes-Afflick examines the state of the biomedical research workforce and the conditions needed to sustain a healthy, productive research enterprise. This NIH Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series event is offered in person and through NIH VideoCast.