Insights into hippocampal circuitry and performance from studies of synaptic plasticity
Serena Dudek, mind from the Synaptic and Developmental Plasticity Group at National Institute of Ecological Health Sciences, discusses how her curiosity about critical period plasticity brought her to staring at the hippocampal area CA2. She delivered this talk during SfN’s Meet-the-Expert Series at Neuroscience 2017. The written text below continues to be condensed and gently edited while offering highlights from her talk. Pay attention to the audio recording above for that full remarks.
Summary of My Curiosity about Plasticity
I began my undergraduate research in the College of California, Irvine within the first neuroscience programs, known as psychobiology. I labored for Gary Lynch, when individuals were just working the mechanisms of lengthy-term potentiation (LTP) and becoming LTP to occur inside a dish. Lynch was pushing the concept that induction of LTP was postsynaptic.
Among the couple of undergrads in the lab, I required everything in. It had been a real formative time. I learned one can learn an issue at multiple levels. I additionally learned doing scientific studies are exhilarating — and i also could get it done — to ensure that got me thinking about likely to graduate school. I visited Brown College.
One Path Diverged to some Postdoc Between Two Labs after which Another Postdoc
After graduate school, I needed in which to stay the ocular dominance plasticity field, and so i visited Mike Friedlander’s lab. He’d a confocal microscope. At that time, i was still pretty not even close to doing in vivo imaging, however the fact he’d a confocal microscope would be a big feature.
Although I needed in which to stay the plasticity field, I still desired to keep my fingers in biochemistry. And So I began with Gail Manley. She ran Tau, a microtubule-connected protein.
I discovered myself attempting to marry both of these fields using a postdoc with labs. They hadn’t really spoken to one another just before me visiting wanting to utilize them. However, I come up with an NRSA which was funded as well as on the joint project. Because it switched out, it did not work.
Serena Dudek, mind from the Synaptic and Developmental Plasticity Group at National Institute of Ecological Health Sciences, discusses how her curiosity about critical period plasticity brought her to staring at the hippocampal area CA2. She delivered this talk during SfN’s Meet-the-Expert Series at Neuroscience 2017. The written text below continues to be condensed and gently edited while offering highlights from her talk. Pay attention to the audio recording above for that full remarks.
Summary of My Curiosity about Plasticity
I began my undergraduate research in the College of California, Irvine within the first neuroscience programs, known as psychobiology. I labored for Gary Lynch, when individuals were just working the mechanisms of lengthy-term potentiation (LTP) and becoming LTP to occur inside a dish. Lynch was pushing the concept that induction of LTP was postsynaptic.
Among the couple of undergrads in the lab, I required everything in. It had been a real formative time. I learned one can learn an issue at multiple levels. I additionally learned doing scientific studies are exhilarating — and i also could get it done — to ensure that got me thinking about likely to graduate school. I visited Brown College.
One Path Diverged to some Postdoc Between Two Labs after which Another Postdoc
After graduate school, I needed in which to stay the ocular dominance plasticity field, and so i visited Mike Friedlander’s lab. He’d a confocal microscope. At that time, i was still pretty not even close to doing in vivo imaging, however the fact he’d a confocal microscope would be a big feature.
Although I needed in which to stay the plasticity field, I still desired to keep my fingers in biochemistry. And So I began with Gail Manley. She ran Tau, a microtubule-connected protein.
I discovered myself attempting to marry both of these fields using a postdoc with labs. They hadn’t really spoken to one another just before me visiting wanting to utilize them. However, I come up with an NRSA which was funded as well as on the joint project. Because it switched out, it did not work.
As I still had a couple of papers in ocular dominance plasticity and Tau biochemistry individually from each lab, my lesson here’s not to spread yourself too thin. I went in investing in 72 hours per week in every lab, and ever since they were two separate projects I could not provide the full focus on all of them. It had been too crazy.
Important too were my job talks. Students get lots of possibilities to rehearse, so certainly make the most. The very first three job talks I’d, my voice was trembling. However, I received a deal soon after relocating to the NIH for any second postdoc with Doug Fields.
Beginning Up My Lab
After, I did not wish to move, and so i remained at NIH. When you are at NIH within the intramural program, I had been conscious of the possibilities there for PIs. I gone to live in New York, where there’s certainly one of a couple of NIH institutes outdoors from the NIH mothership.
What Altered My Lab’s Direction: Finding Concentrate on CA2
I had been thinking about plasticity of critical periods. When beginning my new lab, I would work on layer four — where synaptic plasticity ends the first, and also the most seriously, meaning you cannot get LTP or lengthy-term depression (Limited) within the older creatures.
Doug Bayless found our institute to provide a chat located by our ion funnel physiologists, David Lance armstrong. He ran the 2 pore domain potassium channels TREK-1.
He demonstrated the slide that altered the direction of my lab. I sitting up and observed TREK-1 is was highly expressed in layer four.
It had been within the literature that TREK-1 elevated during the period of postnatal development. We had arrived concentrating on molecules which allow plasticity, which are high at the start of development.
Couple of people within the field, including Carla Schatz and Takao Hensch, were also thinking about molecules that will show up in development and stop plasticity. TREK-1 really appeared enjoy it would suit you perfectly. It’s full of layer four, and low or high in CA1, to ensure that made sense.
However, CA2, that we now focus on, would be a little patch of stain that caught my attention and interest.
I did not learn about CA2. After I began digging, I discovered there is past CA2. The majority of it originated from seizure literature. There have been other papers onto it, although not regarding plasticity.
It had been my naïve view in those days TREK was among the only stuff that made CA2 different.
Therefore we requested the issue, “Is plasticity reduced CA2 in accordance with CA1?” I figured it might be an excellent spot to study synaptic plasticity and regulating synaptic plasticity — much better than layer four — because layer four has numerous different thalamic inputs, however the cells will vary shapes and sizes when compared to other layers.
My concentrate on CA2 really required within the lab. We still had our transcription and our synapse printing projects, but slowly and gradually, CA2 appeared far more interesting than other things for me personally.
Resourse: https://neuronline.sfn.org/scientific-research/
