Brainstem

…with further exploration of the brainstem and cerebellum. Traditional blunt dissection reveals major pathways, while axial, sagittal and coronal MRI comparisons connect anatomy to imaging. Consolidation and self-assessment sessions help participants test their recognition of structures. Live online via Zoom

…to identify the neural circuits in the brainstem bridging the initiation and execution of instinctive behaviours in mice by developing an an

Bats, like all mammals, rely on the identification of regulations and deviations in their acoustic environment. This phenomenon, called deviance detection, has been studied intensively in the past and keeps gaining attention in the field of electrophysiology. Over time, an impressive complexity of deviance detection could be shown, in both animal and human studies. However, complex forms of auditory deviance detection were so far only demonstrated for high-level brain structures. Here, we used a naturalistic acoustic stimulation protocol to demonstrate that complex deviance detection already h

…somatotopic organization in the Brainstem → Thalamus → Cortex axis. This organization results in the formation of barrels and intervening "spaces" known as septa. Our in-vivo silicon probe recordings, conducted simultan

…in the neuromodulatory activity of the brainstem. The brainstem prompts periods of both enduring and transient changes of neuronal excitability that modify the activity of other sub-structures in a precise manner. Thus, brainstem activity may play a critical role in memory formation. However, the specific neural mechanisms that a

The cerebellum, a long-studied brain structure, has recently experienced significant advances in our understanding of its functions in many processes. Although its influence on emotions is still being studied, the cerebellum has been found to influence emotional control. This has important implications for understanding emotional disorders and neuropsychiatric conditions, contributing to a broader understanding of brain function in emotions.Our project consists of developing a bottom-up model, addressing the microscale, mesoscale, and large scale. This approach seeks to capture the structure,

In vertebrates, the whole body postural control is mainly achieved by motor reflexes of vestibular source. The responsible excitatory vestibulospinal (VS) pathways have been described in a large variety of species and show striking anatomical and functional resemblances despite strong biomechanical dissimilarities. Here, we investigate in two phylogenetically distant species whether the inhibitory networks surrounding these VS pathways may orchestrate vestibular-originating reflexes to possibly match them to specific biomechanics. Combining various anatomical techniques, we demonstrate the exi

In natural speech, the harmonic pattern of a speaker’s fundamental frequency (f0) and its higher harmonics elicits a neural response at the fundamental frequency which can be captured by electroencephalography (EEG) or magnetoencephalography (MEG), termed speech-FFR. While EEG measurements have found a subcortically evoked early neural activity to this speech-FFR, MEG studies have recently emphasized involvement of cortical sources as well. Here, we focused on disentangling the sources of the neural response at the fundamental frequency of speech using EEG-based source localization. We theref

…across vertebrates indicate that the brainstem is critical for motor arrest, the mechanisms remain elusive. A recent study in zebrafish showed that upon sensory-motor mismatch, passivity involves noradrenergic signaling eliciting a brain-wide glial calcium wave. However, it remains unknown how noradrenergic activation translates into subsequent glial calcium waves and provokes motor arrest. Our working hypothesis is that noradrenergic neurons integrate intensive s

David Chalmers’s (1995) hard problem famously states: “It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises.” Thomas Nagel (1974) wrote something similar: “If we acknowledge that a physical theory of mind must account for the subjective character of experience, we must admit that no presently available conception gives us a clue about how this could be done.” This presentation will point the way towards the long-sought “good explanation” -- or at least it will provide “a clue”. I will make three points: (1) It is unfortun

Maintaining posture is a vital challenge for all freely-moving organisms. As animals grow, their relationship to destabilizing physical forces changes. How does the nervous system deal with this ongoing challenge? Vertebrates use highly conserved vestibular reflexes to stabilize the body. We established the larval zebrafish as a new model system to understand the development of the vestibular reflexes responsible for balance. In this talk, I will begin with the biophysical challenges facing baby fish as they learn to swim. I’ll briefly review published work by David Ehrlich, Ph.D., establishin