May 19th – Jonathan Hanley (University of Bristol)
F40, Biomedical Sciences Building
Tuning trafficking and translation with dynamic protein interactions
Synaptic plasticity involves numerous changes to the molecular machinery at synapses. These include alterations in the number and subtype of AMPA receptors expressed at synapses by regulated trafficking, changes in dendritic spine morphology, and modulation of local protein synthesis by fine-tuning translation in dendrites. Dynamic protein-protein interactions are essential components of all of these processes.
http://www.bris.ac.uk/biochemistry/people/jonathan-g-hanley/research.html
June 2nd – Neil Marrion (University of Bristol)
F40, Biomedical Sciences Building
How does Glutamate leave a vesicle?
The release of neurotransmitter is fundamental to communication between cells. The excitatory neurotransmitter that mediates rapid transmission in our brains is glutamate. The synaptic delay between presynaptic activation and the appearance of the postsynaptic response is only 200 μs, so any release mechanism has to be fast. The standard release mechanism for vesicular glutamate is by ‘full fusion’, a process where the vesicle incorporates fully into the terminal membrane to dump its contents into the synaptic cleft. This is energetically not favourable and an alternative release mechanism was identified to challenge this. This alternative mechanism is termed ‘kiss-and-run’, where the vesicle remains intact and simply releases its contents into the synaptic cleft via a narrow pore. This talk will present a hypothesis and data that support the proposal that ‘kiss-and-run’ exocytosis occurs in the mammalian brain and is the dominant mechanism for glutamate release.
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/phys-pharm/people/neil-v-marrion/index.html
June 9th – Chris Miall (University of Birmingham)
SM3, Maths
The cerebellum as a flexible predictor for motor control and for cognition
The talk will describe my team’s research showing that the cerebellum has an important role in predicting the sensory consequences of actions, a role evidenced by behavioural tasks, by electrophysiology, by interventions including brain stimulation and lesions, and by functional imaging. We have recently explored how these theoretical ideas can be extended to cognitive domains, and I will argue that the human cerebellum is involved in predictive language processing, and may be a general purpose predictor support all cognitive functions.
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/psychology/people/profile.aspx?ReferenceId=14488
June 30th – Claire Hales (University of Bristol)
SM3, Maths
Diffusion modelling of ambiguous decision making in rodents
Affective states alter cognitive processes. The measurable consequences of these alterations are referred to as affective biases. In both humans and animals, decision making about ambiguous cues is modified by changes in affective state. This is known as judgement or interpretation bias, and can be measured in rodents using a two-choice ambiguous cue interpretation task. In order to further investigate the decision making processes that underlie judgement biases measured in this task, I apply the Ratcliff diffusion model to rodent behavioural data. I will present results showing how ambiguous cue interpretation is altered by variety of affective state manipulations – both pharmacological and psychosocial, and spanning acute and chronic timescales – as well as the different diffusion model parameters that are altered in judgement biases caused by these various manipulations.
http://www.neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/directory/profile.php?acroberts