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Mechanism and Function of Dendritic Self-Avoidance and Self/non-Self Discrimination in the Mammalian Nervous System
(2015-06-29)
Dendritic and axonal arbors of many neuronal types exhibit self-avoidance, a phenomenon in which branches repel each other. This process ensures that individual neurons cover all parts of their territory uniformly. Some ...
Function-Specific Serotonergic Neurons in the Control of Breathing and Body Temperature
(2015-10-05)
The control of respiration and body temperature involves neural circuits within the brainstem modulated by the neurotransmitter serotonin (5HT), though it is unclear precisely which serotonergic neurons are critical to ...
Synaptic Specificity and Plasticity in Parvalbumin-Basket Cell Circuits
(2015-09-29)
Inhibitory interneurons regulate experience-dependent plasticity across brain regions. Perisomatic inhibition by fast-spiking, parvalbumin-positive basket cells (PV-cells) is central to these processes, but which synapses ...
The role of centriole biogenesis in control of brain size
(2015-08-24)
Mutations in several genes that encode centrosomal proteins dramatically decrease the size of the human brain, which is the largest in the primate lineage, but how the proteins encoded by these microcephaly (‘small brain’) ...
The Regulation of Immunological Processes by Peripheral Neurons
(2015-09-23)
The nervous system and the immune system are the primary sensory interfaces between the internal and external environment. They are responsible for recognizing, integrating, and responding to stimuli with the appropriate ...
Dynamics of Neural Activity During Chemotaxis in Caenorhabditis Elegans
(2015-09-28)
The nervous system of an animal must control and coordinate locomotion in a changing and often unpredictable environment in order to survive. When a Caenorhabditis elegans navigates its environment, the nervous system can ...
Transcriptional Controls Over Specification of Neocortical Projection Neuron Subtype and Area Identity
(2015-08-04)
The complex and sophisticated neocortical circuits that mediate higher-order brain functions are assembled from an extraordinary variety of neuronal subtypes, each with distinct morphologies, output connectivity, and ...
A Rapid Peak in Gamma Power Signals Critical Period Plasticity in the Developing Mouse Visual Cortex
(2015-09-01)
Experience sculpts neural circuits during discrete windows of postnatal development termed critical periods. This process allows the brain to adapt to its environment and efficiently allocate resources. However, maladaptive ...
Activity Dependent Regulation of Inhibitory Circuitry
(2015-10-02)
Inhibition controls information flow through a neural circuit by modulating synaptic
integration, restricting action potentials, and coordinating the activity of ensembles of
neurons. These functions are mediated by a ...
Leveraging Human Brain Activity to Improve Object Classification
(2015-04-08)
Today, most object detection algorithms differ drastically from how humans tackle visual problems. In this thesis, I present a new paradigm for improving machine vision algorithms by designing them to better mimic how ...