On World Alzheimer’s Day, Thursday, September 21st, join the Carney Institute for an interactive panel discussion with leading scientists, researchers and advocates about the latest advances in Alzheimer’s Disease research and treatment, and how Rhode Island is playing a pivotal role in the battle against the disease.

David Shenk (’88), journalist and author of The Forgetting - “a literary portrait of Alzheimer’s disease perfectly balanced between sorrow and wonder, devastation and awe” - will facilitate this discussion with:

• Jessica Alber, Ph.D, assistant professor of biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences and Ryan Research Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Rhode Island

• Maritza Ciliberto, member of the National Institutes of Health’s National Advisory Council on Aging, AD care partner/research advocate and participant

• Edward (Ted) Huey, M.D., Director of the Memory and Aging Program at Butler Hospital, affiliate of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University

• Gregorio Valdez, Ph.D., GLF Translational Associate Professor of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry at Brown University

Butler Hospital, the Rhode Island Department of Health, and the Rhode Island Alzheimer’s Association on-hand to share information, answer questions and connect attendees with relevant resources.

—————————————————————————-

Thursday, September 21st from 4:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Held virtually (Register here. NOTE: The online event will begin at 5:00 p.m.) and in-person (RSVP below) at Ray Hall on the campus of Butler Hospital (345 Blackstone Blvd, Providence, RI 02906). Park in Lot B and follow path 4 or 5.

Free and open to the public, RSVP required (complete information below or call 401-863-7421).

Refreshments will be served.

Title: Sleep and synaptic(dys)regulation: Implications for autismspectrum disorder

Host:  Dr. Matthew Nassar 

This Fall ICERM is hosting a semester-long program focusing on issues at the intersection between math and neuroscience. This program will bring in prominent computational and mathematical neuroscientists from abroad. The first of three weeklong workshops will be the week of Sept 18, focusing on Neuronal Network Dynamics.

Please join us for an informal networking wine and cheese event sponsored by the Carney Center for Computational Brain Science with attendees of this workshop on Tues Sept 19 at 5:30pm-7:30pm, at 164 Angell St, 4th floor.

Please note also that each workshop will define a set of “open questions” that will serve as problems for mathematicians to work on. We are hoping that some of these questions are inspired by problems defined by the Carney community, and reciprocally, that the open questions will inspire other work at Brown. Feel free to bring your ideas to this event and any other throughout the semester. We will host another wrap up event at the end of the semester to crystallize these discussions and inspire new collaborative work.

Join us for the Advance RI-CTR NVivo Virtual Drop In Session (PC Based) with Dr. Rochelle Rosen.

The drop-in session will be on Monday, September 18th from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM. This is an open session where you may ask Dr. Rosen specific questions about the NVivo software and its applications to your study.

You can also join the drop-in session to learn from the questions asked by others. To learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, please go to the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page: https://advancectr.brown.edu/resources/qualitative-research-resources.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form at https://advancectr.brown.edu/schedule-service-consultation.

Questions? Please contact [email protected].

Trainer: Rochelle Rosen, PhD

Title:  Mouse models of motor neuron disease stemming from unrestrained sphingolipid synthesis

Advisor:  Dr. Claire Le Pichon, NIH

Please join The Center for Translational Neuroscience for a special seminar featuring Julie Kauer, PhD, Stanford University School of Medicine. 

Somatodendritic release of neuropeptides
from VTA dopamine neurons

Hosted by Eric Morrow, MD PhD
and the Center for Translational Neuroscience.

Dr. Kauer’s talk will take place at 70 Ship St, Auditorium 107, at 11AM. 

Additionally, please join Dr. Kauer and Carney Institute colleagues
for refreshments in the SFH Atrium at 5pm in the evening. 

Title: Superstition, sensory learning, and inhibitory plasticity in the cerebral cortex

Host:  Dr. Diane Lipscombe

The Advance RI-CTR Clinical and Translational Research Seminar Series showcases clinical and translational research from across Rhode Island. This series features outstanding science from expert investigators alternating with Advance RI-CTR Pilot Projects awardees sharing their early research. Seminars are held virtually on the second Thursday of each month.

Thursday, September 14, 2023:

Caroline Richardson, MD: “New Approaches to Type 2 Diabetes” 

New developments in Type 2 Diabetes Care have the potential to dramatically improve outcomes for this common and costly disease. However, the rapid pace of innovation in diabetes care has outpaced our ability to transform care delivery. The presentation will focus on pragmatic and implementation focused clinical trials of interventions to support patients and their primary care teams to incorporate new strategies to manage in Type 2 Diabetes including new medication classes, continuous glucose monitoring, and low carbohydrate diets.

About the Speaker

Dr. Richardson is the George A. and Marilyn M. Bray Professor and Chair of the Department of Family Medicine at Care New England and Brown. Her research is focused on improving the quality of care for Type 2 Diabetes in primary care. Prior to moving to Rhode Island in 2022, she was at the University of Michigan where she lead the state wide Michigan Collaborative for Type 2 Diabetes and she was the center director of the Veterans Administration Diabetes Quality Enhancement Research Initiative. She is an expert in pragmatic trial design and patient facing e-health research and leads the VA’s national Diabetes Prevention Clinical Demonstration Project.

Title:  A Paradigm Shift in GPCR Recruitment and Activity: GPCR Voltage Dependence Controls Neuronal Plasticity and Behavior

Host:  Dr. Gilad Barnea

Join us for the Virtual Advance RI-CTR Introduction to NVivo Workshop (PC Based) with Dr. Rochelle Rosen.

This workshop will be on Thursday, September 7th from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM with an optional Q&A from 11:00 AM to 11:30 AM. This workshop will be a general overview and introduction on the NVivo software and its potential uses. To learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, please go to the Advance-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page: https://advancectr.brown.edu/resources/qualitative-research-resources.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form at https://advancectr.brown.edu/schedule-service-consultation.

If you have any questions contact [email protected].

Trainer: Rochelle Rosen, PhD

Please join us for a virtual open house for the Advancing Research Careers (ARC) program. Come learn about the structure of the program and resources available to ARC scholars. We’ll hear from program leadership and current ARC scholars will share about their experience with plenty of time for questions.

A two-year, NINDS-funded program, ARC seeks to promote the research careers of women and persons historically excluded due to ethnicity and race (PEERs) in brain sciences. Participants benefit from financial support, mentorship and professional development tailored specifically to each person.

Please join the Pathobiology Graduate Program for the final examination of Shannon Paquette for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The candidate will present herself for examination on the dissertation entitled “Loss of Irf8+ macrophages results in cardiac dysfunction and disrupts adult heart health in zebrafish”.

Title:  Exploring the effects of consecutive nights of pre-sleep alcohol on human sleep

Advisor:  Dr. Mary Carskadon

Join us for the Virtual Advance-CTR Introduction to NVivo Workshop (Mac Based) with Dr. Rochelle Rosen.

This workshop will be on Wednesday, August 9th from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM with an optional Q&A from 1:00 PM to 1:30 PM. A general overview and introduction on the NVivo software and its potential uses will be shared. To learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, please go to the Advance-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form.

Questions? Please contact [email protected].

Trainer: Rochelle Rosen, PhD

Title:  Characterization of non-visual Opsin 3 receptor signaling and function in the hypothalamus and beyond

Advisor:  Dr. Elena Oancea

Title:  The Cells and Molecules Underlying Mechanosensation

Advisor:  Dr. Alexander Chesler, NIH

Thesis Title:  Elucidating rTMS-induced antidepressant efficacy as a function of neurometabolites: from clinical biomarkers to mechanisms

Advisor:  Dr. Tara White

Thesis Title:  Developing a Three-Dimensional Brain Microtissue Model of Ischemic-Reperfusion Injury

Advisor:  Dr. Diane Hoffman-Kim

“Neuroscience careers in biotech: first principles and what to expect in making the transition from academia”

 Dr. Robert Thorne, Denali Fellow at Denali Therapeutics, an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, and International Brain Barriers Society (IBBS) President.

RSVP: https://forms.gle/CUw6JSNvyEJYqbHY7

“Leveraging physiology and engineering for drug delivery to the brain: taking antibodies, enzymes and other proteins to the final frontier.”

Dr. Robert Thorne, Denali Fellow at Denali Therapeutics, an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, and International Brain Barriers Society (IBBS) President.

RSVP: https://forms.gle/CUw6JSNvyEJYqbHY7

Join us for the Advance-CTR NVivo Virtual Drop In Session (PC Based) with Dr. Rochelle Rosen.

The drop-in session will be on Tuesday, July 18th from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM. This is an open session where you may ask Dr. Rosen specific questions about the NVivo software and its applications to your study. To learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, please go to the Advance-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page: https://advancectr.brown.edu/resources/qualitative-research-resources.

You can also join the drop-in session to learn from the questions asked by others.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form at https://advancectr.brown.edu/schedule-service-consultation.

If you have any questions contact [email protected].

Trainer: Rochelle Rosen, PhD

Thesis Title: Contributions to the Relationship Between Circadian Rhythm Protein Dysfunction and Epilepsy–CLOCK and the PAR bZIP Transcription Factors

Advisor: Dr. Judy Liu

Join us for the Virtual Advance-CTR Introduction to NVivo Workshop (PC Based) with Dr. Rochelle Rosen.

This workshop will be on Tuesday, July 11th from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM with an optional Q&A from 1:00 PM to 1:30 PM. This workshop will be a general overview and introduction on the NVivo software and its potential uses. To learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, please go to the Advance-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page: https://advancectr.brown.edu/resources/qualitative-research-resources.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form at https://advancectr.brown.edu/schedule-service-consultation.

If you have any questions contact [email protected].

Trainer: Rochelle Rosen, PhD

Thesis Title: Examining Subcellular Compartmentalization of Synaptic Plasticity in CA1 Apical Dendrites

Advisor:  Dr. Zheng Li, NIH

Please join the Carney Institute for a talk by John Crary, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Pathology,
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

“Neuropathology of Age-Related Tauopathy: Leveraging Genetics and Deep Learning”

In person: Rhode Island Hospital
APC building, Seminar Room 12-003

Remotely: via Microsoft Teams
Meeting ID: 220 396 061 184
Passcode: XqgWUV

Or call in (audio only): +1 401-226-0907
Phone Conference ID: 737 423 820#

Please join us for the 2023

Carney Summer BBQ!

Pembroke Green (rain location: Crystal Room)

June 21, 2023          12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.

Please RSVP by June 13th

Please join us for the Center for Translational Neuroscience 2023 Spring Retreat! 

Opening Remarks: Mukesh K. Jain, MD, Dean of Medicine and Biological Sciences, Senior VP for Health Affairs

Guest Speaker: Swetha Gowrishankar, PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago: Neuronal lysosome transport and function: links to neurodegenerative diseases

Faculty Speakers: Sonia Mayoral, PhD; Alexander Fleischmann, PhD; Kate O’Connor-Giles, PhD; Sofia Lizarraga, PhD

Trainee Speakers: Eugene Lee, PhD; Robert Loius Hastings, PhD 

Hosted by: Eric Morrow, MD PhD 

Refreshments to Follow in the LMM Courtyard

Please join the Carney Institute for a Mini-Symposium on the Zimmerman Innovation Awards in Brain Science. Previous awardees will share their projects, how they fit the goals of the program, and how the funding helped propel their science. The event will also include an overview of the application and review process as well as an open Q&A session.

10:00 - Overview of the Innovation Awards Program
10:25 - Greg Valdez / Lalit Beura - “Optimizing housing conditions to accelerate the translation of research using mouse models of Alzheimer’s Disease”
10:50 - Kate O’Connor-Giles / Erica Larschan - “Identifying drivers of coordinated synaptic gene expression across neuronal subtypes”
11:15 - Theresa Desrochers / Matthew Nassar - “Beyond Steady State: Mapping frontal representations onto sequential choices through reinforcement learning”
11:40 - Q&A about the upcoming application cycle

The 2023 call for applications is now open in UFunds and the application deadline is September 1.

Refreshments will be served.

Title:  Olfactory circuits and emerging principles of cell type evolution

Advisor:  Dr. Alexander Fleischmann

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Title: Unique Molecular Regulation of Prefrontal Cortex Confers Vulnerability to Cognitive Disorders

Host:  Dr. Matthew Nassar

The Behavior and Neurodata Core presents a special seminar with Stephanie Noble, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Associate, Radiology & Biomedical Imaging, Yale University.

“Empirical Effect Size Guidelines for Typical fMRI Studies”

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Title:  Brain Complexity and Motor Neuron Degeneration Explored Through the Lens of Pluripotent Stem Cells

Host:  Dr. Gilad Barnea

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Earl Miller, Ph.D., Picower Institute and Deot of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT.

For a long time, the brain was thought to function like clockwork, with specialized parts working together due to physical connections. However, in recent decades, our understanding has undergone a major shift. While the individual parts and anatomical connections are still important, many cognitive functions are driven by emergent properties - higher-level properties that arise from the interactions between the parts. A key aspect of these emergent properties are brain waves, oscillating rhythms of electrical activity that allow millions of neurons to self-organize and control our thoughts, much like a crowd doing ‘the wave’.

Title:  Examining synaptic connectivity and function at the fly neuromuscular junction 

Host:  Dr. Kate O’Connor-Giles

Carney Institute Lunch Talk: “Mechanisms for Compositionality in Large Neural Networks”- Ellie Pavlick, Ph.D.

Please RSVP by May 5, 2023.

Brain Rhythms Connect Physiology and Cognition

A lecture by Dr. Nancy Kopell, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, Boston University. Reception begins at 4:30 p.m.

Speaker: Amrita Lamba , PhD Candidate, Brown University

Title: The (in)flexible social brain: How learning dynamics unfold in our uncertain social world

Advisor: Associate Professor Oriel FeldmanHall

All are invited ~ Please feel free to attend!

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Title:  Neuromodulation for PTSD and Depression

Host:  Eric Morrow, MD, PhD

Organized by the Brown University Center for Translational Neuroscience

Special Seminar: “Traveling Waves in Cortex: Spatiotemporal Dynamics Shape Perceptual and Cognitive Processes”- Lyle Muller, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Mathematics, Western University.

With new multichannel recording technologies, neuroscientists can now record from cortex with high spatial and temporal resolution. Early recordings during anesthesia observed waves traveling across the cortex. While for a long time traveling waves were thought to disappear in awake animals, in recent work we have revealed traveling waves during awake states, where activity is more difficult to analyze. Whether these waves play active functional roles in sensory perception and cognitive processes, however, has remained unclear.

In my research, I have introduced new computational methods for detection and quantification of spatiotemporal patterns in multisite recordings. These methods have revealed that small visual stimuli consistently evoke waves traveling outward from the point of input in primary visual cortex of the awake monkey. Further, we have recently found that spontaneous cortical activity is structured into waves traveling across visual area MT, and that these spontaneous waves modulate both excitability of local networks and the probability of faint stimulus detec-tion. Our results thus indicate that spontaneous and stimulus-evoked waves play active roles in sensory processes. We aim to understand the general computational roles for these waves in upcoming computational and mathematical work.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Tara Mandalaywala, Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Title: Do you see what I see?: Automatic encoding of social categories across childhood

Abstract : Many caregivers wonder when to talk to children about social issues such as racism and inequality, often expressing the belief that children do not pay attention to race or inequities in the world around them. In this talk I will discuss two studies that use different methods to ask when 3 - 9-year-old children begin automatically encoding (e.g., spontaneously paying attention to) social categories like race, gender, and status, and whether encoding develops in relation to racial or economic characteristics of children’s communities. Across both studies, we see that children readily encode social categories, but find only limited evidence that encoding acts as a cognitive adaptation that helps children “tune in” to relevant community characteristics. Our results suggest that caregivers should not underestimate what young children notice about the world around them and that future research needs to explore how to talk with children about the inequities they see.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Peter Hitchcock PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, CLPS Dept., Brown University

Title: A Computational Lens on Rumination and Worry

Abstract: Rumination and worry both refer to thinking that is repetitive, negative, and difficult to control. Repetitive negative thinking (RNT) was proposed over twenty years ago as a construct that encompasses both ways of thinking. Yet, a basic science framework — that clarifies what precisely is shared (and what is distinct) between rumination and worry — has been elusive. Here, I will provide a high-level overview of my research training a computational lens on this question. This work highlights that both rumination and worry may result from a combination of suboptimal learning and failed (meta-)control. It suggests that, once the propensity to RNT has developed, it becomes difficult to engage with and learn about the external world — possibly leading to a vicious cycle of increasing internal preoccupation. I will describe why decomposing the processes involved in self-judgment may clarify what distinguishes rumination from worry. I will close by describing my future plans for applying this research to develop scalable interventions for RNT.

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Carney Institute Lunch Talk: “Logical Reasoning in Children, Adults, and Machines”- Roman Feiman, Ph.D.

Please RSVP to this event.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Professor Michael Richardson - Macquarie University

Title: Modelling and understanding human behaviour and action decisions for predictive human-machine systems

Abstract: Successful team performance requires individuals effectively coordinate their movements and actions with each other to achieve task success. This includes effectively deciding who, how and when to act, with robust decision-making often differentiating expert from novice performance. I will present recent research demonstrating how a combination and dynamical motor primitives and cutting-edge machine learning and explainable-AI techniques can not only be employed to model and predict human perceptual-motor behaviour and decision-making during team action, but can also help identify the information that best explicates expert task performance. Motivated by the increasing need to develop artificial systems capable of safe and robust human interaction, I will also detail how these models can be employed to control the movement and decision-making dynamics of interactive artificial agents and create AI systems that can anticipate, prevent, or counteract human performance errors.

Special Seminar: “Mechanisms Underlying Natural and Artificial Modulations of Sensory Representations”- Agostina Palmigiano, Ph.D.,, Postdoctoral Research Scientist in the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.

Neuronal representations of sensory stimuli depend on the behavioral context and associated reward. In the mouse brain, joint representations of stimuli and behavioral signals are present even in the earliest stage of cortical sensory processing. In this work, we propose a parallel between optogenetic and behavioral modulations of activity and characterize their impact on V1 processing under a common theoretical framework. We first infer circuitry from large-scale V1 recordings of stationary animals and demonstrate that, given strong recurrent excitation, the cell-type-specific responses imply key aspects of the known connectivity.

Next, we analyze the changes in activity induced by locomotion and show that, in the absence of visual stimulation, locomotion induces a reshuffling of activity, which we describe theoretically, akin to that we had found in response to optogenetic perturbation of excitatory cells in mice and monkeys. We further find that, beyond reshuffling, additional cancellation among inhibitory interneurons needs to occur to capture the effects of locomotion. Specifically, we leverage our theoretical framework to infer the inputs that explain locomotion-induced changes in firing rates and find that, contrary to hypotheses of simple disinhibition (inhibition of inhibitory cells), locomotory drive to individual inhibitory cell types largely cancel. We show that this inhibitory cancellation is a property emerging from V1 connectivity structure.

This work is a first step towards elucidating the disparate and still poorly-understood role of non-sensory signals in the sensory cortex, and uncovering the dynamical mechanisms that underlie their effect Furthermore, it establishes a foundation for future research to explore the relationship between adaptable sensory representations and cognitive flexibility.

Carney Meetup: Neurotech Entrepreneurship

Are you interested in carrying brain research into industrial or clinical settings? University scientists are often unfamiliar with many core ideas, including patenting, startup creation, and industry-sponsored research, that are critical to creating successful applications outside academia.

Join the Carney Institute for Brain Science for a Meetup featuring Melissa Simon, Director of Business Development at Brown Technology Innovations, who will describe entrepreneurial approaches and resources at Brown to help get innovative research out into the world.

Carney Meetups are informal gatherings focused on topics in brain science, including open discussion moderated by Jason Ritt, Carney’s scientific director of quantitative neuroscience. Videos and notes from previous Meetups are available on the Carney Institute website.

Pizza and drinks will be provided; RSVPs to [email protected] before Mon. Apr. 24th are appreciated to help estimate the amount of food.

Title:  An investigation of cortical circuit mechanisms underlying non-invasive brain stimulation and their causal role in the modulation of somatosensory perception

Host:  Dr. Stephanie Jones

Join us to learn about this new major funding opportunity through the ARPA-H from Brown Alum David Bowen ’86, PhD, Special Advisor at the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. Attendees of this event will gain:

Join the Carney Institute for the Brain Science for its External Postdoc Seminar Series (BrainExPo), featuring Tristan Geiller, Postdoctoral Researcher at Columbia University.

Abstract: The hippocampus is a multi-stage neural circuit, where local interactions between excitatory principal cells and inhibitory interneurons are thought to contribute distinct computations important for memory formation and retrieval. The overarching goal of my research is to uncover the architecture of the local circuits that provides the scaffolding for such interactions, by developing and using variety of experimental methods in behaving mice. 

Carney Special Seminar: “Risk Reduction Strategies for Primary Prevention of Dementia”- Kristine Yaffe, Ph.D., Scola Endowed Chair and Vice Chair, Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Epidemiology, and Director of the Center for Population Brain Health at the University of California, San Francisco.

Modifiable risk factors are hypothesized to account for 30-40% of dementia. Targeting these risk factors could have a large downstream effect on Alzheimer disease and related disorders (ADRD) incidence and prevalence and be a key strategy for primary prevention. I will highlight our work as well as others’ related to several key risk factors with the best evidence: data from underlying mechanisms to public health implications will be presented for cardiovascular risk factors, physical activity, sleep quality and traumatic brain injury (TBI). I will then present very recent results from an NIH-funded 2-year personalized, risk reduction intervention called the Systematic Multi-domain Alzheimer’s Risk Reduction Trial (SMARRT).

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Ilona Bass, PhD - Postdoctoral Research Fellow- Harvard University

Title: Reasoning about the Beliefs of Teachers

Abstract : The ability to teach and be taught by others is a cornerstone of human intelligence. Formal frameworks of pedagogy help explain how teachers can best select evidence for others, and why learners can draw richer inferences from pedagogically demonstrated data. These models rest on an implicit assumption that teachers have an accurate representation both of the subject matter being taught and of the learner’s beliefs. But in real-world social learning scenarios, there are many reasons that these assumptions won’t always hold true: As teachers, we may not be able to tell learners every single thing they need to know; we may not be fully aware of each individual learner’s ability level, making it unclear what we should teach next; we may not be able to fully attend to every learner and give canned responses as a result. Are children able to perceive these subtle breakdowns in teaching and adapt their inferences and learning accordingly? I will present results from three converging lines of work suggesting that they can. As early as the preschool years, children (1) detect and evaluate teaching that is under-informative in very subtle ways, (2) calibrate decisions about challenge-seeking to teachers’ false beliefs about their competence, and (3) expect teachers to engage thoughtfully with learners in the moment, as opposed to relying on rote, automatic reasoning processes. For each set of studies, I will present empirical results from both adults and children (age 4-10), and I will also review some of the formal models that underpin our predictions. I will close by thinking about future empirical and theoretical directions, particularly for the third line of studies, which is ongoing work I’m currently conducting in my postdoc.

Title: Single cell analysis of the aging female hypothalamus

Advisor:  Dr. Ashley Webb

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Judith Peters
Associate Professor
Maastricht University and Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

The Medial Temporal Lobe (MTL) is an important interface between perception and memory, yet precise mechanisms remain unclear as human MTL activity is challenging to capture with standard non-invasive neuroimaging methods. In this talk I will present a series of recent memory studies in which we intracranially recorded MTL neurons selectively tuned to certain concepts (e.g., person identity), while participants performed tasks that featured those concepts. Such ‘concept cells’ allow dynamic tracking of multiple individual memory representations across changing task contexts.

In the first experiment, we studied how prioritization of items in Working Memory (WM) is reflected by concept cells and broadly-tuned ‘maintenance’ cells in MTL. Unprioritized WM representations were maintained in an active format that was orthogonal to prioritized WM representations. This format mitigated task-interference (unwarranted early read-out) yet kept items readily accessible (as evidenced by rapid read-out when prioritized after a task-switch). In the second experiment, we further investigated task-interference in a dual-task psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm. MTL processing delays were associated with memory reinstatements rather than sensory processing. Three final experiments showed that such reinstatements are also involved in non-spatial sequence memory and language comprehension.

Together, these experiments demonstrate how human MTL neurons represent memoranda and their task context. The rapid construction and updating of such memory representations due to changes in task demands, and their predictive value for behavioral performance, suggest MTL contributes to effective and flexible goal-driven behavior.

Title:  TBA

Host:  Dr. Sonia Mayoral

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Paul Linton PhD -
Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience, Columbia University
Fellow, Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, Columbia University
Visual Inference Lab, Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University
 
Title: Minimal theory of 3D vision

Abstract: Traditional approaches to 3D vision argue that it aims to provide a metric 3D map of the environment by integrating various different depth cues (stereo, perspective, shading, etc.) into a single coherent percept. In this talk I argue for a two-stage theory of 3D vision that questions this approach by focusing primarily on stereo vision. Stereo vision is an excellent paradigm to think about this problem because it seems obvious what the visual system ought to be doing on traditional accounts: triangulating the location of objects based on the separation between the two eyes. However, first, I outline a number of scenarios that conflict with this account, and propose an alternative where stereo depth isn’t trying to estimate the 3D properties of the world, but merely eradicating rivalry between the two retinal images. Second, the challenge is then to explain how stereo vision nonetheless affects our 3D judgements about the world (for instance, the size and distance of objects), as well as how stereo vision interacts with other depth cues such as perspective and shading. This I argue occurs after the 3D percept has been extracted from stereo vision, at the level of visual cognition, which connects our minimal 3D percept (from stereo vision) to the world.

Background: Linton, P. (2023). ‘Minimal theory of 3D vision: new approach to visual scale and visual shape’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 378(1869): 20210455.

Linton, P., Morgan, M.J., Read, J.C.A., Vishwanath, D., Creem-Regehr, S. H., Domini, F. (2023). ‘New Approaches to 3D Vision’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 378(1869): 20210443.

“Selective Regional, Cellular and Molecular Vulnerability to Age-Related Cognitive Decline and Alzheimer’s Disease”- Ana Pereira, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Neurology and Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disorder and has enormous psychosocial and economic impact on society. There is a critical need for a better molecular pathophysiological understanding of the disorder that can pinpoint novel and more effective treatment targets. Abnormally hyperphosphorylated tau, aggregated in neurofibrillary tangles (NFT), a neuropathological hallmark in AD, has been shown to lead to neuronal death. NFTs accumulate preferentially in excitatory pyramidal neurons of the hippocampus and association neocortex. In this talk we aim to better understand this regional, neuronal and molecular vulnerability. We also investigate the mechanisms through which tau propagates from one brain region to interconnected neural circuits. Further, we study APOE4, the major genetic risk factor for AD and its relationship to tau pathology. We will also discuss the associations between sleep disorders, tau pathobiology and AD risk and progression.

Dissertation defense: Anusha Allawala
Title: Network dynamics of cognitive control and mood during deep brain stimulation for depression
Sponsor: Center for Biomedical Engineering
Room: Barus and Holley Room 190
Zoom: contact [email protected] for zoom link

Carney Special Seminar: “Leveraging Model Organism Genetics to Inform Tau Targeted Neurotherapeutics for Alzheimer’s Disease”- Brian Kraemer, Ph.D., Professor of Medicine, UW Division of Gerontology & Geriatric Medicine
Associate Director for Research, Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center (GRECC), VA Puget Sound Health Care System, Co-Leader, Research and Education Component, ADRC, University of Washington

Recent therapeutic approaches for Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders have largely focused on targeting amyloid plaques. However, in Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders, abnormal tau remains more closely linked to cognitive decline and neurodegeneration. New studies in model systems have demonstrated that RNA binding proteins modulate the severity of tau pathology. I will describe the evidence supporting the importance of a physical interaction between tau protein and RNA in neurodegeneration. Through this work, we aim to understand the characteristics and consequence of tau RNA complex formation with an eye towards novel neurotherapeutics development.

Johannes Lederer, Ph.D.,
Professor of Mathematical Statistics
Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

Talk Title: Sparse Deep Learning

Abstract: Sparsity is popular in statistics and machine learning, because it can avoid overfitting, speed up computations, and facilitate interpretations. In deep learning, however, the full potential of sparsity still needs to be explored. This presentation first recaps sparsity in the framework of high-dimensional statistics and then introduces sparsity-inducing methods and corresponding theory for modern deep-learning pipelines.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Alana Jaskir- PhD Student - CLPS Department - Brown

Title: Expediency and generalization in human reinforcement learning

Abstract: When trained on specialized tasks, cutting-edge algorithms in deep reinforcement learning can outperform human experts, but humans remain unsurpassed in expediently learning new tasks and generalizing their learning to novel scenarios. To begin my talk, I will highlight my recent paper on how the biological properties of reinforcement learning facilitate expedient learning in novel environments. Next, I will discuss ongoing work investigating whether humans utilize “reward-predictive abstraction” for generalization. Recent work interfacing computer science and cognitive neuroscience (Lehnert et. al, 2020) showed the performance advantages of learning reward-predictive abstractions, which cluster situations that share analogous action-reward sequence structure. Specifically, this abstraction allows an agent to exhibit “deep transfer,” quickly reusing this compression even when goals and required actions to achieve those goals change. I will outline a novel sequential decision-making task that tests for deep transfer in human behavior and present our preliminary findings.

CAAS Rounds: Dr. Rohan Palmer - Genetics of Substance Use

This event is online only. 

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Title:  Diverse behavioral representation by neocortical PV interneuron dynamics converges between SI and V1

Advisor:  Dr. Christopher Moore

April 13, 2023 | Lecture

“First-person writers,” says author Meghan O’Gieblyn, “have always called upon metaphorical language to describe their interior worlds. But as our metaphors for consciousness grow increasingly technological — as we come to see our brains as hardware, and our minds as software — these interior worlds have come to seem less reliable, premised as they are on what the philosopher Daniel Dennett has called the myth of ‘privileged access.’ Our conception of our inner lives is also changing due to current debates about consciousness and the emergence of advanced technologies. At a moment when algorithms are learning to write sonnets and online political discourse has been infiltrated by bots, the ability to believe in the interior lives of others (and of ourselves) is becoming more fraught and requires, at times, a leap of faith.”

Meghan O’Gieblyn is the author of God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning (Doubleday, 2021) and Interior States (Anchor, 2018), which won the 2018 Believer Book Award for nonfiction. Her essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Wired, The Guardian, The New York Times, Bookforum, n+1, The Believer, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of three Pushcart Prizes and her work has been anthologized in The Best American Essays 2017 (Mariner) and The Contemporary American Essay (Anchor, 2021). She also writes the “Cloud Support” advice column for Wired.

This event was a part of the Greg and Julie Flynn Cogut Institute Speaker Series, which brings high-profile speakers in the humanities to the Brown University campus. Each visit includes a public lecture and a separate seminar-style meeting with undergraduate students. Brown University undergraduate students and faculty members can nominate future speakers.

Title:  Neural mechanisms of itch and inflammation

Host:  Mary Salib, Graduate Student

Carney Special Seminar: “Charting the Pathway of Protection Against Alzheimer’s by Harnessing the Genetic Power of Protected Cases”- Joseph Arboleda-Velasquez, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Associate Scientist at Schepens Eye Research Institute of Mass Eye and Ear.

I explore the extraordinary diversity of humanity through the genetic makeup of individuals exhibiting remarkable protection against brain disease and aging. I focus on populations with the highest risk of developing brain disease due to known susceptibility genes, identifying individuals who have escaped the expected cognitive decline. My lab has established unique protocols to identify and validate protective gene variants in escapee cases even in extremely challenging situations with an n=1. We reported in Nature Medicine the amazing case of a woman who remained cognitively intact for almost 30 years, way past the expected time for her to develop autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s. In this woman, we identified a homozygous rare variant in APOE named Christchurch as the culprit. My laboratory’s aim is to continue to characterize cases of individuals with protection against Alzheimer’s disease and expand our approach to include individuals from families with other neurodegenerative diseases such as frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, familial stroke, Huntington’s disease, and centenarians who have remained cognitively preserved despite their advanced age. By studying these unique cases, we hope to identify new targets for therapeutic interventions to prevent or slow the progression of age-related cognitive decline and neurodegenerative disorders.

Pain is protective and necessary for quality of life. Chronic pain is different. It persists well beyond an injury or illness. It may last a lifetime and be resistant to over the counter medications. It’s among the most common conditions in the United States and is one of the most prevailing reasons adults in the U.S. seek medical care. A February 2022 article in the journal Pain found that at least 50 million adults (one in five people) reported pain on most days or every day, with the most common pain locations in the back, hip, knee and foot.

All this pain has implications for almost every aspect of daily life. A decade ago, researchers estimated that, in the U.S. alone, the annual economic costs attributable to pain — in the form of health care costs and lower worker productivity — ranged from $560 to $635 billion. This is greater than the costs of heart disease, cancer and diabetes combined. Overprescription by unscrupulous pain clinicians has also fueled an opioid epidemic that continues to take a heavy toll on American communities, with more than 80,000 opioid-related deaths reported in 2021.

In this Carney Conversation, we’ll dig into the neuroscience behind pain, look at some of the new treatments and tools being put into practice to assist those who are suffering, and a novel way that some scientists are rethinking our understanding of pain as a form of “learned behavior” that the brain may be able to unlearn.

Guest Panelists:

Ziya L. Gokaslan, M.D., is the Julius Stoll professor and chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and an affiliate of the Carney Institute for Brain Science. He earned his medical degree from the University of Istanbul in Turkey and serves as the neurosurgeon-in-chief at both Rhode Island and Miriam hospitals. He leads the Norman Prince Spine Institute at Lifespan and is the Director of the Complex Spinal Surgery Fellowship at Alpert Medical School. His practice focuses on complex spinal reconstruction and radical surgical treatment of both primary and metastatic spinal tumors, sacral neoplasms, and spinal cord tumors.

Frederike Petzschner, Ph.D, is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and the Carney Institute for Brain Science at Brown University. She is also a director of the Carney Brainstorm Program that accelerates the translation of computational brain science to clinical applications and commercialization. She received a master’s degree with honors in physics at the University of Würzburg and a Ph.D. in systemic neuroscience at the LMU Munich. Her research focus is human perception and mental health. She uses mathematical models in combination with behavior and brain imaging to understand brain-body and brain-world interactions in the healthy population and in patients suffering from psychosomatic symptoms, disordered gambling, obsessive-compulsive disorder and chronic pain.

Carney Special Seminar: “The Impacts of Environmental Inference on Decision Strategies”- Tahra Eissa, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Colorado - Boulder.

The world around us has a statistical structure that we can leverage to improve our choices. Learning these key features of our environment is therefore useful for optimizing our decision-making strategies, allowing us to balance efficiency with flexibility. In this seminar, I will apply computational models to the study of human behavior to address questions on how we utilize environmental information and the brain mechanisms that support environmental inference. First, I will discuss how humans modulate their decision-making strategies in different environments and show that individuals apply a diverse set of strategies that vary in their complexity, accuracy, and types of observable errors. Second, I will present work on how environmental features can be learned and stored in the brain. Finally, I will briefly address how computational models and human behavior can be combined with human intracranial electrode recordings to directly probe how environmental inference is encoded in the brain. These studies set the groundwork for future investigation on how we update our environmental beliefs and corresponding decision strategies, which can improve physiological understanding of cognition as well as support translation applications for those with impaired cognitive function.

Speaker: Meghan Willcoxon , PhD Candidate, Brown University

Title: Can you follow your friends? Effects of ensemble averaging, attention and grouping when following a crowd.

Advisor: Professor William Warren

All are invited ~ Please feel free to attend!

The Office of University Postdoctoral Affairs (OUPA) and the Office of the Provost at Brown University are pleased to announce the 2023 Brown Postdoctoral Research Symposium on Wednesday, April 12, 2023, from 8:00 AM to 12:30 PM.

The symposium will take place at 225 Dyer Street, Providence, RI 02903, on the fifth and fourth floors.

The symposium’s program will include a keynote address by Alaina G. Levine, research presentations by selected postdocs, the distribution of the 2023 Postdoctoral Excellence Awards, raffle prizes, professional headshots, one-on-one career consultations, and more!

Click here to see the schedule.

Click here to see the speakers.

Click here to read the Frequently Asked Questions.

This symposium is a meaningful opportunity for professional development, networking with peers from across disciplinary areas, and increasing the visibility of postdoctoral research at Brown.

Please note:

The symposium is an in-person event without a hybrid or virtual option due to venue limitations.

Registration for the symposium is limited to postdoctoral research associates and postdoctoral fellows at Brown only.

Please direct any questions to OUPA by emailing [email protected].

Please join the Pathobiology Graduate Program for the final examination of David Karambizi for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The candidate will present himself for examination on the dissertation entitled “Targeting plasticity modulators in glial cell pathology”.

Special Seminar: The Brain in Motion: “Causes and Dynamics of Drifting Neural Representations”- Shanshan Qin, Ph.D., postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Recent experiments have revealed that neural population activity associated with stable sensation and action continually changes over days and weeks— a phenomenon called representational drift. To address the origin and dynamics of such drift, I employed the Hebbian/anti-Hebbian network with noisy synaptic updates to dissect the properties of drifting receptive fields during learning. The model reveals how degeneracy and noise generically lead to representation drift during representation learning. The drifting receptive fields of individual neurons can be characterized by a coordinated random walk, resulting in a stable representational similarity of population codes over time. This model recapitulates experimental observations in the hippocampus and posterior parietal cortex and makes several testable predictions. At the end of my talk, I will also discuss the implications of representational drift.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Pablo Leon Vilagara - Postdoctoral Research Associate - CLPS Department - Brown University

Title: How do concepts of biological kinds develop through childhood?

Abstract :
Within the first few years of life, children successfully learn complex categories, ranging from the color categories of their language to the structure of biological taxonomies, that allow them to reason and generalize. An important part of this development is understanding that abstract features are essential for categorization rather than relying on perceptual representations alone. In this talk, I want to present two studies that explore the development of children’s concepts of biological kinds.

First, I present a recently completed experiment studying 5- and 7-year-olds’ and adults’ notions of fruit categories. We used a novel developmental paradigm to produce large collections of category exemplars. Our results suggest that across age groups, children and adults had consistent expectations about the features of representative category members. Furthermore, we find that, across all age groups, these categories are complex, with fruit categories exhibiting multiple representative category members. However, our results also suggest that younger children produced more noisy category member distributions, a result that we are currently exploring further.

In a second experiment currently in the piloting stage, we are exploring children’s notions of the category of birds. In this experiment, we aim to study children’s categorization of typical and atypical birds and the features they provide for their categorization. We are especially interested in the developmental trajectory of characteristic features for the bird category and potential overextension errors (such as categorizing a bat as a bird) stemming from these learned features.

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Title: Imaging the brain at high spatiotemporal resolution

Host:  Dr. Ahmed Abdelfattah

Carney Special Seminar: “Retrotransposon Activation in Neurodegenerative Tauopathies: From Bench to Bedside”- Bess Frost, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Bartell Zachry Distinguished Professor for Research in Neurodegenerative Disorders
Barshop Institute for Longevity & Aging Studies, Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s & Neurodegenerative Diseases, Department of Cell Systems & Anatomy, University of Texas Health San Antonio.

Alzheimer’s disease and dozens of other neurodegenerative “tauopathies” are characterized by an accumulation of tau protein aggregates in affected brains. Autosomal dominant mutations in MAPT, the gene encoding tau protein, are sufficient to drive neurodegeneration, clearly demonstrating that tau dysfunction is sufficient to cause disease. Therapeutic efforts to date have largely focused on targeting pathogenic forms of tau or reducing overall tau levels. While these strategies seem well-reasoned, we now know that tau accumulates and initiates pathological changes in the brain decades prior to symptom onset, and that such changes are highly neuroinflammatory. As such, therapeutic strategies targeting tau itself may thus be ineffective in symptomatic patients, as pathogenic forms of tau have already initiated a series of toxic and potentially irreversible cellular events in these individuals. Our studies have led to new and exciting areas of research connecting retrotransposons, the “dark” half of the human genome, and tauopathies. Mechanistically, we discovered that retrotransposon activation is driven by tau-induced nucleoskeletal destabilization and consequent decondensation of constitutive heterochromatin. My research program is therefore focused on understanding mechanisms underlying retrotransposon-induced toxicity in tauopathies, including induction of an inflammatory antiviral response and the negative effects of retrotransposition. The mechanistic information emanating from our studies is actionable, as evidenced by our Phase II Antiretroviral Therapy for Alzheimer’s Disease trial (ART-AD, NCT04552796).

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Professor Tim Welsh - University of Toronto
 
Title: How TwO Plan and Coordinate Actions in Social Contexts

Abstract: The seemingly effortless way in which we are able to complete everyday goal-directed actions, such as picking up cup or a smart phone, belies the complex series of processes underlying even the simplest of movements. Movement planning and execution becomes even more complex in social situations because one also needs to identify and predict the actions and thoughts of other people. The overall goal of this talk is to provide some insights into the processes that shape action in social contexts. The focus of the talk will be the core processes that enable one to perceive and anticipate the actions of other people. There is growing evidence that the same sensorimotor codes that lead to the generation of action are also used during the perception and prediction of the actions of other people. The manner in which these processes are shaped by other social factors will also be discussed.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Annette D’Onofrio, Assistant Professor, Northwestern University

Title: Perceiving sound change reversal: Age-based dynamics in Chicago’s Northern Cities Vowel Shift

Abstract: Sound changes in progress are often hallmark features of regional dialects, becoming linked with local speakers and local social meanings. These changes are can be examined in apparent time through both age-based differences in production, and through listener age differences in perception. However, little is known about the ways in which sound changes that are reversing in production over time are perceived by community members. In this talk, I explore how listeners of various ages within one U.S. community in Chicago produce and perceive vowels implicated in the region’s characteristic Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCS), which is undergoing reversal over time. Findings suggest that sociolinguistic perception is not simply a reflection of an individual’s static social position within a community, from which matched production and perceptual patterns are derived. Instead, a listener’s own positionality, experience, and ideas about others in their community can condition not only their sociolinguistic productions as speakers, but also their expectations as listeners.

Carney Special Seminar: “Molecular and Circuit Mechanisms Underlying Frontotemporal Dementia”- Fen-Biao Gao, Ph.D., Professor, Governor Paul Cellucci Chair in Neuroscience Research, Department of Neurology, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and AD-related dementias (ADRDs) such as frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are a major global health challenge of the 21st century. About 40% of FTD cases are familial and many genetic mutations have been identified, offering exciting molecular entry points to dissect the underlying pathogenic mechanisms common to FTD, AD and other neurodegenerative diseases. In this presentation, I will discuss studies in which we have used Drosophila, neurons derived from patient-induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), and mouse models to reveal molecular and circuit mechanisms of FTD and identify potential therapeutic targets. In particular, I will describe two recently published studies and discuss a new story and some other unpublished preliminary results.

Title: The impact of acute delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on the alcohol-induced inflammatory response

Advisor:  Dr. Carolina Haass-Koffler

Join the Carney Institute for the Brain Science for its External Postdoc Seminar Series (BrainExpo), featuring Feng-Kuei Chiang, Postdoctoral Fellow at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Abstract: Cognitive strategies, such as processing information in sequences, can improve behavioral performance in working memory tasks, but how this is accomplished at the neural level remains unclear. Here we created a non-human primate model of self-generated search strategies to study prefrontal functions and found that sequencing strategies shift information from single, highly tuned neurons to more distributed population codes in lateral prefrontal cortex.

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Title: Molecular and circuit mechanisms linking social stress to addiction

Host:  Dr. Karla Kaun

Associate Professor Mariano Viapiano from the SUNY Upstate Medical University will present “Brain Cancer: Finding New Targets Outside the Tumor Cells”. This lecture is part of the 2023 Pathobiology Graduate Program Spring Seminar Series. ​​

The 25th Annual Mind Brain Research Day features a poster session, bag lunch, and keynote address, “Translating Brain Mechanisms of Fear to Understanding PTSD,” by Kerry Ressler, MD, PhD, of McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and the Carney Institute for Brain Science. Register by March 15 to attend. 

Poster Session
11 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.
Sayles Hall

Lunch
11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.
Sayles Hall
*You must RSVP to reserve a lunch.*

Keynote Address & Poster Awards
1 p.m. - 3 p.m.
Salomon Hall

Min Jee Jang, PhD
Postdoctoral scholar, NARSAD Young Investigator
California Institute of Technology

Abstract: Gene delivery has become an essential strategy for neuroscience research and offers the promise of therapeutic applications. Adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) have been of particular interest as a gene delivery vehicle (vector) due to their low toxicity and high engineering potential, although their low efficiency and selectivity have required invasive surgical procedures and transgenic animals. To fulfill the pressing need for toolkits for efficient and precisely targeted non-invasive gene delivery, we have developed high-throughput engineering and screening approaches for advancing recombinant AAV vectors. Initially, we developed a high-throughput selection platform based on directed evolution, named Cre recombinase-based AAV targeted evolution (CREATE), that allows us to effectively narrow down a vast library of capsid variants to dozens of promising candidates over a couple of iterations. With this method, we identified several capsid variants that can deliver genes broadly and efficiently to the central and peripheral nervous systems of mice and non-human primates through systemic administration. Next, to further characterize the tropism of AAV vectors, we developed an ultrasensitive sequential fluorescence in situ hybridization (USeqFISH) method for the spatial transcriptomic profiling of both AAV and endogenous transcripts in intact brain tissue. This method achieves exceptional sensitivity that only requires the unique sequence of 14-nucleotide (nt) in cultured cells and 40-nt in tissue for selective RNA visualization, allowing short barcoding of AAV genomes. With an RNA-retaining tissue clearing and a two-step signal quenching method, we established USeqFISH available for quantitative detection of endogenous and virally delivered genes (up to ~50) via sequential labeling in three-dimensional, intact brain tissue. Using USeqFISH, we profiled the transduction of pooled systemic AAVs carrying unique barcodes across tens of genetically defined cell types in diverse mouse brain regions, revealing the distinct cell-subtype tropism of each variant. We also demonstrated the applicability of USeqFISH to the non-human primate (NHP) brain, showing its potential translation into in situ AAV profiling and multimodal, single-cell, intact-tissue analysis in this species. We believe these two approaches provide a powerful, high-throughput technology that will accelerate the engineering of targeted non-invasive gene delivery vectors and bring us closer to successfully translating AAV vectors into safer, more accessible gene therapeutics.

Valentin Wyart (Ecole Normale Supérieure - PSL University, Paris, France)

Making sense of uncertain environments, a cognitive process modeled across domains as statistical inference, constitutes a difficult yet ubiquitous challenge for human intelligence. Recent research has identified the limited computational precision of human inferences as a surprisingly large contributor to the variability of perceptual and reward-guided decisions made under uncertainty. In this talk, I will review the theoretical and experimental evidence obtained by my group which, taken together, provides key insights into the origin, impact and function of this cognitive noise for human learning and decision-making. Moving beyond the classical description of internal noise as a performance-limiting constraint for cognitive systems, I will present unpublished findings from recurrent neural networks and large datasets of human participants that delineate the adaptation and the emergent benefits of cognitive noise in response to specific forms of uncertainty.

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Amaro Tuninetti - PhD Student - CLPS Department - Brown University
 
Title: Effects of unpredictability on a broadband echolocating bat

Abstract: Echolocating bats perceive and navigate their environment by emitting ultrasonic pulses and hearing the echoes produced by acoustically reflective surfaces around them. This process requires bats to have highly flexible and rapid control of their temporal and spatial sampling strategies. Due to the range limitations of ultrasound and the environments in which they navigate and forage, bats are often confronted with sudden and unpredictable changes in their sensory experience. To understand how bats react to these unpredictable changes, we conducted a series of behavioral, psychophysical, and neural experiments on a model broadband echolocator, the big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus). These experiments help provide a holistic view of how this biosonar model responds to changes in environment, target location, and echo acoustic parameters.

Title: Novel signaling interactions for axon guidance through DCC family receptors

Advisor:  Dr. Alexander Jaworski

Join the Carney Institute for the Brain Science for its External Postdoc Seminar Series (BrainExPo), featuring Elif Tunc-Ozcan, Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University.

Abstract: I will talk about how chemogenetically regulating the activity of adult-born hippocampal neurons, without changing their numbers, affects stress-related phenotypes and antidepressant action. Additionally, I will describe how we confirmed bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling as a common downstream pathway that mediates the behavioral effects of different classes of antidepressants.

The Brown Brain Fair is back in 2023! The Brown Brain Fair, a collaboration between Brain Week Rhode Island and the Brown Brain Bee, has brought as many as 600 visitors to campus to learn about the brain.

Taking place during Brain Week Rhode Island, the Brown Brain Fair is one of many events aimed at educating about brain research awareness. Our event will feature interactive activities intended to teach about the mind and brain.

There is fun for all ages - from art projects and games for children, to mini-lectures for teens and adults - we hope that you learn something new at the Brown Brain Fair!

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Grace Lindsay - Assistant Professor- New York University
 
Title: Connecting performance benefits on visual tasks to neural mechanisms using convolutional neural networks

Abstract: Behavioral studies have demonstrated that certain task features reliably enhance classification performance for challenging visual stimuli. These include extended image presentation time and the valid cueing of attention. Here, I will show how convolutional neural networks can be used as a model of the visual system that connects neural activity changes with such performance changes. Specifically, I will discuss how different anatomical forms of recurrence can account for better classification of noisy and degraded images with extended processing time. I will then show how experimentally-observed neural activity changes associated with feature attention lead to observed performance changes on detection tasks. I will also discuss the implications these results have for how we identify the neural mechanisms and architectures important for behavior.

Please join us for this special seminar featuring Dr. Ethan Goldberg, Associate Professor of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Hosted by the Center for Translational Neuroscience. 

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Jim Wood, Associate Professor, Yale University

Title: Allomorphy and allosemy in nominalizations (and beyond)

Abstract: There is a broad consensus across a variety of otherwise-distinct frameworks that morphology is realizational (Siddiqi & Harley 2016:540): morphosyntactic features have a layer of analysis that is distinct from, and systemically prior to, the way they are expressed. When a single morphosyntactic feature gets more than one form, we call it allomorphy. Recent work has embraced the idea that something similar or identical happens in the semantics, sometimes referred to as allosemy: a single morphosyntactic feature can get more than one meaning. In this talk, I show how allosemy resolves a long-standing tension in the analysis of action nominalizations, which have been understood since Grimshaw 1990 to be systematically ambiguous. For example, transmission can have basically the same meaning as the verb transmit (as in ‘Jyn Erso’s transmission of the Death Star plans’) or it can refer to a concrete object (as in ‘The transmission is lying on the floor’). The tension is that the systematic ambiguity suggests that nominalizations should have a uniform structure, but one reading suggests that the structure contains a verb phrase, while the other suggests the opposite. I review arguments based on Icelandic data that all readings of nominalizations can and should be derived from a single structure, by inserting different allosemes into that structure. After showing how this resolves the analytical tension, I compare allosemy and allomorphy more broadly, and suggest that they really are parallel — the same basic mechanism operating in different interfaces — despite two intriguing differences in how they seem to be used.

Join us for a panel on perspectives from a genome editing company, Intellia Therapeutics! We are hosting Brown Alums Dr. Nick Marcantonio, Vice President, Strategy and Portfolio Management at Intellia Therapeutics, and Dr. Liam O’Connel, Scientist at Intellia Therapeutics.

The seminar will take place in Marcuvitz Auditorium and on Zoom on Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 at 5-6pm. Expect a brief presentation followed by a Q&A session. The seminar will be followed by a casual, in-person reception. Food will be provided.

RSVP

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Meghan Meyer, Assistant Professor, Columbia University

Title: How the human brain makes sense of the social world

Abstract: Humans are a highly social species. As children, we depend on caretakers for support. As adolescents, we navigate intricate social hierarchies. As adults, we cooperate in complex work environments. To thrive in this social world, all of us need to anticipate people’s reactions and learn about our social networks. My program of research integrates social psychology and cognitive neuroscience to understand what drives our inherent tendency, ability, and need to think about the social world around us. I aim to answer questions such as: How do we juggle multiple social cognitive demands on the fly? How do we learn and consolidate information about the people and groups with whom we interact? And how do we represent the complex social networks we navigate day-to-day? In this talk, I will demonstrate how the brain’s default network—an interconnected set of cortical regions—may be designed to help us navigate and learn from our complex social world. In fact, the default network may be so integral to human social behavior that when our social connection goes awry, we see traces of our loneliness in this brain network.

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Jovan Kemp - CLPS PhD Student - Brown University

Title: Examining depth cue integration as a deterministic process

Abstract: Although humans can perceive the 3-dimensional relationships of the world without much effort, the computational problem of extracting depth from the retinal images is quite complex. This is due to information loss that results from projecting the 3D physical world onto the 2D retinal surface. Fortunately, there are numerous sources of visual information, termed depth cues, that exist which are highly correlated to the 3D physical structure. Current models suggest that these cues may be interpreted through perceptual inference. However, we contend that a deterministic model may better account for the data and better reflect depth perception in humans. To understand how these cues are integrated to form depth estimates, we conduct experiments which examine observers’ judgment accuracy and discrimination precision on visual objects defined by subsets of these possible cues. We show that, despite the popularity of probabilistic inference models in perception, depth estimation in humans may be better modeled as a deterministic process.

Sarah Aufmkolk is a Research Associate in the Ting Wu lab, where she is focusing on advancing genomic imaging technologies for unraveling information hidden in the three-dimensional organization of chromatin. Sarah is also working on platforms for open-source sharing of imaging data as part of the 4D Nucleome project. Sarah received her PhD in Physics at the University of Würzburg in Germany, where she investigated synaptic proteins at nanoscale with Markus Sauer using dSTORM approaches pioneered by the lab. She conducted postdoctoral research at the Montreal Neurological Institute and the Chemistry Department of McGill in Montreal, where she applied single-molecule localization techniques to investigate structural changes in synaptic plasticity associated with neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases. This venture led to the exploration of various fluorescence and label-free imaging techniques, pushing for potential correlative imaging approaches with super-resolution microscopy – work she is now applying to spatial genomics.

Join us for a day of exploring the careers of physician-scientists and their impact on medicine and health.

Schedule:

8:15 - 9:00 am Breakfast and Poster Set-up

Breakfast will be provided.

9:00 am - 9:15 am Introductory Remarks (Dean Mukesh K. Jain, MD)

9:15 am - 10:15 am Keynote Presentation (Douglas R. Lowy, MD)

Douglas R. Lowy, Acting Director of the National Cancer Institute, will open the conference with a keynote presentation.

10:15 am - 11:30 am Poster Session

Student-led research will be showcased in the first-floor atrium

11:30 am - 12:15 pm Lunch

Lunch will be provided

12:15 pm – 1:45 pm Physician-Scientist Speakers: From Bench to Bedside

Brown researchers and trainees will provide engaging talks followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience

12:15 pm – 1:45 pm Break

2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Career Panel

Two career panels will take place; one with senior physician-scientists, and one with current physician-scientist trainees.

The event is free and registration is required.

If accommodations are required, please contact [email protected] before February 15.

The Charles O. Cooke, M.D. Distinguished Visiting Lectureship

Embracing Challenges and Change Throughout a Professional Career

Presented by Douglas R. Lowy, M.D.

About the Speaker

Douglas R. Lowy, M.D., is Chief of the Laboratory of Cellular Oncology, Principal Deputy Director, and present Acting Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). He has directed a research laboratory at NCI since 1975. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. For his research with John Schiller on technology that enabled the preventive human papillomavirus vaccines, they have jointly received numerous honors, including the 2007 Federal Employee of the Year Service to America Medal from the Partnership for Public Service, the 2011 Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal Award, the 2018 Szent-Györgyi prize, and the 2017 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the country’s most prestigious honor for biomedical research.

About the Lecture

The Charles O. Cooke, M.D. Distinguished Visiting Lectureship was established in 1994 through a bequest by Mrs. Ruth Cooke Peterson so Brown could hold lectures (in any branch of medicine) that hold the promise of significant and lasting benefit to medical education at Brown, or to the community, or to the delivery of health care services.

Data Science, Computation, and Visualization (DSCOV) Workshops

Fridays at noon

These are one-hour skills-focused workshops, designed to be hands-on, so bring a laptop if you can. They are open to anyone, and any pre-requisite knowledge or resources will be announced beforehand.

Pizza will be available. Please RSVP below if you plan to attend in person.

March 3:

Power Analyses for RNAseq and Microbiome Analyses

Presenter: 

August Guang, Lead Genomics Data Scientist (OIT)

Prerequisites: 

None

Target Audience: 

Biological Researchers

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

CLPS - Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Colloquium Series

Speaker: Dr. Julia Marshall, Boston College

Title: The Early Pursuit of Third-Party Punishment

Abstract:  Responding to wrongdoing is a central feature of our social lives and allows for cooperative societies to flourish. Although we have many tools at our disposal to respond to wrongdoing, punishment often takes prominence. Accordingly, a core assumption of modern institutional justice systems is that transgressors should be punished for their misdeeds. In the present talk, I argue that punitive interventions can be traced to judgments and behaviors present in early childhood. I showcase research showing that children are both assessors and agents of third-party punishment. With respect to assessment, children across divergent societies hold broad notions about the obligatory nature of third-party punishment. With respect to agency, children punish wrongdoing (even when doing so is costly), and their motives to do so are tethered to a variety of justice-related concerns (such as retribution and deterrence). I end by presenting recent behavioral research investigating how social group membership shapes the expression of retributive desires. Together, my talk will feature research showing that third-party punishment is a signature of children’s sophisticated toolkit for regulating social relationships and behavior.

Join the Carney Institute for the Brain Science for its External Postdoc Seminar Series (BrainExPo), featuring Hanieh Falahati, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale School of Medicine.

Abstract: The spine apparatus is a morphologically peculiar specialization of the endoplasmic reticulum at dendritic spines, but studying this organelle has remained a longstanding challenge in neuroscience for the past 60 years. I have used an interdisciplinary approach to characterize the morphological features and molecular components of the spine apparatus, which finally allows us to address the longstanding questions of biogenesis and function of this enigmatic organelle.

CLPS - Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Colloquium Series

Speaker: Dr. Felicity Gore, Stanford University

Title: Neural circuits connecting sensory stimuli to motivated behavior

Abstract:  A subset of sensory stimuli evoke innate responses that require no learning. The vast majority of sensory stimuli however only acquire meaning by experience. How do sensory stimuli become connected to appropriate behavioral output? In this talk, I will discuss 2 complementary efforts aimed at addressing this issue. First, I will discuss the characterization of amygdala circuits that connect sensory stimuli to the execution of appropriate learned behavior. Second, I will discuss more recent work characterizing the role of fronto-striatal circuits in connecting sensory stimuli to choice behavior. These studies uncover fundamental neural circuits through which sensory stimuli become connected to appropriate behavioral output.

Data Science, Computation, and Visualization (DSCOV) Workshops

Fridays at noon

These are one-hour skills-focused workshops, designed to be hands-on, so bring a laptop if you can. They are open to anyone, and any pre-requisite knowledge or resources will be announced beforehand.

Pizza will be available. Please RSVP below if you plan to attend in person.

February 24:

Favorite Things About the Julia Programming Language

Presenter:

Carlos Paniagua, Senior Data Scientist (OIT)

Prerequisites:

Some coding experience in any programming language for scientific computing such as Python, R, or MATLAB

Target Audience:

People who use computing to solve scientific problems

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speakers: Professors Laura Janda & Tore Nesset, UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Title: Recycled morphemes from macro- and micro-perspectives

Abstract: We present two studies of the evolution of morphemes. The first study takes the macro-perspective of the grammaticalization of morphology from both lexical and grammatical sources, for example the recruitment of nouns referring to body parts to serve as locational and temporal markers (for example ‘back’ comes to mean ‘behind’ and ‘ago’ in many languages). The source-to-target relationships explored in Heine & Kuteva’s 2002 World Lexicon of Grammaticalization primarily involve meaning shifts that “stay in their lane” by means of obvious metonymic and metaphorical shifts. However, other shifts are more dramatic, for example an ongoing shift from a possessive marker to a vocative in North Saami and from a dual number marker to a virility gender marker in the history of Polish. Our second study adopts a micro-perspective, zooming in on an ongoing change in Russian, whereby morphemes that used to denote ‘wife of a professional’ are being recycled to mean ‘female professional’. For instance, kapitanša, with the suffix -ša, used to mean ‘captain’s wife’, but is now primarily used in the meaning ‘female captain’. Our analysis of corpus data sheds new light on this controversial issue in Russian grammar.

Athar N Malik: “Neural Circuit Mechanisms Underlying Disorders of Consciousness.”

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

CLPS - Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Colloquium Series

Speaker: Dr. Caroline Robertson, Dartmouth University

Title: How memory meets perception during naturalistic scene understanding

Abstract: Perception is shaped by both our immediate sensory input and our memories formed through prior experience. Yet, how memory influences ongoing perception in the brain is poorly understood. One model system for studying memory-based interactions lies at the anterior edge of high-level visual cortex. Here, my lab has recently identified a “convergence zone” for perception and memory of real-world scenes. Immediately anterior and adjacent to each of the three classic “scene-selective” areas of high-level visual cortex, we observed three patches of cortex that selectively activate when recalling (vs. perceiving) familiar scenes. This “anterior-shift” for scene memory vs. perception is consistent at the individual-subject level, replicated across cohorts, and intriguingly specific to scenes (i.e., not observed for other domains of high-level stimuli like faces, objects, bodies). Subsequent studies using functional connectivity, decoding analyses, and population receptive field mapping help to understand how these areas may mark a new mechanistic step between memory structures and high-level visual cortex for memory-guided scene perception. Together, these studies illuminate how perceptual and mnemonic systems interact during naturalistic visual experience using headmounted VR and fMRI, and offer new insight into how the brain’s functional architecture enables sensory and mnemonic representations to interface, while also avoiding sensory-mnemonic interference.

Join the Carney Institute for Brain Science, in conjunction with Love Data Week, for a Carney Methods Meetup featuring Elizabeth S. Chen, Interim Director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics, Associate Professor of Medical Science, and Associate Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice, and Karen Crowley, Manager of Health Informatics and Data Science in the Center for Biomedical Informatics. They will discuss methods for using Electronic Health Records (EHR) in brain science research.

Carney Methods Meetups are informal gatherings focused on methods for brain science, moderated by Jason Ritt, Carney’s scientific director of quantitative neuroscience. Videos and notes from previous Meetups are available on the Carney Institute website.

Please note: Authenticated Brown IDs are required to join the Zoom.

About the lecture: As a new Jewish culture, the rabbinic edifice is conspicuously distinct in content and scope from the postbiblical Jewish library created over the preceding centuries. Indeed, the rabbis consistently silenced, and almost entirely ignored the extensive literature created in the land of Israel and the Diaspora during the Second Temple period. On the other hand, no set of values, nor any literary work, emerges in a vacuum. Religious civilizations always share overt and covert connections with previous traditions, and rabbinic literature is no exception.

This lecture explores the presence of typical Second Temple period themes and ideas in rabbinic literature. It surveys several examples of pre- and non-rabbinic texts and concepts that survived and infiltrated rabbinic literature, and examines the sophisticated fashion in which they were censored, adapted, and “rabbinized” in the process of incorporation in their new ideological context.

About the speaker: Professor Vered Noam is a BJS Visiting Scholar.  She teaches in the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Talmud at Tel Aviv University. She is the author of Shifting Images of the Hasmoneans: Second Temple Legends and Their Reception in Josephus and Rabbinic Literature (Oxford University Press, 2018). She was a winner of both The Michael Bruno Memorial Award and the Israel Prize in Talmud. 

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speakers: Professors Laura Janda & Tore Nesset,  UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Title: Is a group one thing or many? Singular vs. plural agreement in Russian and Norwegian

Abstract: Number agreement is often the locus of variation in languages. We present two studies of constructions in Norwegian and Russian that permit both singular and plural agreement. The Norwegian study investigates sentences with a collective noun as a subject and a predicative adjective in the singular or plural, as in politiet er sikker/sikre ‘the police is/are sure.SG/sure.PL’. On the basis of corpus and survey data, we find that the following factors are significant: animacy and semantic type of subject, distance between subject and predicative adjective, adjective vs. participle, and the adjective’s role as an indicator of agency. The Russian study is of sentences with quantified subjects where the verb can be singular or plural, as in pjat’ studentov priexalo/priexali ‘five students arrived.SG/arrived.PL’. Remarkably, this variation has been quite stable at about 57% plural for two centuries. Statistical analysis of approximately 39,000 corpus examples indicates that the relevant factors in number agreement are: animacy, word order, quantifier type, and frequency. While these studies reveal some similarity in the factors at work cross-linguistically, we argue for the importance of investigation tailored to the specifics of individual languages.

Thomas Wingo, MD
Associate Professor of Neurology and Human Genetics
Emory University

Dr. Thomas Wingo will explore the meaning behind significant associations found using genome-wide association, describe the brain proteome and functional genomics, and identify potential reasons why sex could influence gene expression.

As neuroscientists and neuroengineers, many of us are motivated by the promise of our research, innovations, and countless lab hours finding their way into the clinic. However, there is a seemingly endless expanse of arid “no-man’s-land” between a lab bench and the homes of the people we dream of helping. Researchers aren’t trained to answer questions about investments, business models, financial modeling. Despite the challenges of trying to navigate this landscape, Marc Powell argues that neuroscientists might be the best people to bridge the gap.

In November 2021, Marc cofounded Reach Neuro Inc., a neurotech startup using epidural spinal cord stimulation to restore upper limb function in people with chronic stroke. He’ll talk a bit about his path since graduating from Brown as a neuroengineer and how it leads to Reach Neuro. In this conversation, he’ll share his journey of translating neurotechnologies into reality.

RSVP: https://forms.gle/YGk1cYkrJCzkvUiq6

CLPS - Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Colloquium Series

Speaker: Dr. Lisa Fazio, Vanderbilt University

Title: Misinformation: Why is it a problem?

Abstract:  Why can’t people just realize when something is false and then not believe it? I will discuss the cognitive mechanisms that make exposure to misinformation problematic, even when people should realize it is false. Laboratory studies demonstrate that people often fail to notice errors in what they read or hear. In addition, repetition increases belief in false statements. These effects of repetition occur with many different types of statements (e.g., trivia facts, news headlines, advertisements), and even when the false statement contradicts participants’ prior knowledge. I will present a series of studies demonstrating that the effects of repetition are widespread – occurring for even very implausible statements, occurring in naturalistic settings, and occurring across development. However, the effects are not inevitable, I will also discuss situations where the repetition has only a minimal effect on belief. The presentation will connect cognitive, developmental and social psychological theory to how people make judgments about what is true or false in real-world settings.

Speaker(s): Mark Dieterich, Chief Information Security Officer, and Paul Stey, Assistant CIO, Research Software Engineering and Data Science (Office of Information Technology)

OIT’s Center for Computation and Visualization (CCV) provides Brown’s research community with a variety of services for research computing. This includes research computing consultants, data scientists, and research software engineers who are available for short-, medium-, and long-term collaborations. This also includes infrastructure to support research computing as well as the storage and sharing of files. Join Mark and Paul in this overview of CCV’s services and infrastructure as well as a high-level summary of factors to consider in deciding where to store data. The session will include a look at Brown’s data risk classification system, CCV’s file storage and transfer guide, and include time for your questions.

Aliza Wingo, MD, MS
Associate Professor of Psychiatry
Emory University

Dr. Aliza Wingo will review connections between psychiatric disorders and Alzheimer’s disease at multiple levels of evidence, identification of risk genes for the psychiatric disorders, and neuropsychiatric symptoms in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia. 

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

The Advance-CTR Distinguished Clinical and Translational Research Seminar Series showcases clinical and translational research from across Rhode Island. This series features outstanding science from expert investigators across the translational spectrum. Seminars are held virtually on the second Thursday of each month.

Thursday, February 9, 2023:

Eric Morrow, MD, PhD: “Mechanisms of Human Brain Development and Degeneration Through the Lens of Rare Genetic Disorders”

Eric Morrow, MD, PhD, is a physician-scientist and molecular neurologist with a focus in neurodevelopmental disorders. He is Canadian-born and completed his MD and PhD at MIT and Harvard Medical School. He also conducted postdoctoral training in genetics, neurology, and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Morrow is currently the Mencoff Family Professor of Biology at Brown University, and founding Director of the Brown Center for Translational Neuroscience (CTN). He is a recipient of several awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE), and membership in the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP). Dr. Morrow will present an overview of the Brown CTN. He will also present new data on basic neuronal mechanisms, as well as translational studies with the goal of improving treatments for neurogenetic disorders.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get that.” This refrain will sound familiar to anyone who’s interacted with frustrating customer support chatbots when trying to navigate tech or consumer issues. But ChatGPT, a chatbot released by AI research laboratory in November 2022, is not only more nimble and conversive than previous generations but it can write an essay or a persuasive term paper in a matter of seconds that’s virtually indistinguishable from one penned by an actual human. In this Carney Conversation, we’ll dig into the natural language processing programming and neuroscience behind this technology as well as its implications for the classroom, the workplace, and our society at large.

Join Carney Institute Director Diane Lipscombe and Associate Director Chris Moore for this Carney Conversation with Ellie Pavlick, Manning Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Thomas Serre, Associate Director of the Center for Computational Brain Science, Director for the Center for Computation and Visualization, Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Professor of Computer Science.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Neil Myler, Associate Professor, Boston University

Title: One-replacement, binary branching, and micro-comparative syntax

Abstract: Since some influential observations by C.L. Baker (personal communication to Lakoff 1970; C.L. Baker 1978), one-replacement has become a popular empirical argument for the need for highly nested, binary-branching constituent structure inside the English noun phrase, especially in textbooks (see Osborne 2018:11 for a list). It has become particularly important in motivating the existence of a subconstituent containing the head noun and its complement to the exclusion of any modifiers. In the meantime, numerous challenges have arisen for these arguments (see especially Payne et al. 2013), with some concluding that one-replacement is not a constituency test at all (e.g. Culicover and Jackendoff 2005:135-139).
In this talk, I argue for the following conclusions: (i) one-replacement involves ellipsis of a category containing at least the head noun and its complement (agreeing here with Llombart-Huesca 2002); (ii) extraposition and/or heavy shift can take the noun’s complement out of the ellipsis site, accounting for the ameliorating effect of focus and heaviness on otherwise unacceptable examples; and (iii) in agreement with Kayne (2015), different Englishes exhibit partially different grammars for one-replacement. Amongst these differences, I will suggest, is dialectal and idiolectal variation in the set of nominals that can take complements (here departing from Kayne 2015, Kayne 2008, and a long tradition of forbidding nominals with complements altogether). I draw a direct parallel between this variation and cross-linguistic variation in which nouns “count” as inalienable in languages that observe an alienability distinction.
What all this suggests with regard to the status of one-replacement as a constituency test, I shall argue, is this: one-replacement is a valid constituency test which identifies a unit consisting of a noun and its complement, but which licenses no inferences about the relative hierarchy of NP adjuncts with respect to each other.

CLPS - Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Colloquium Series

Speaker: Dr. Vishnu Murty, Temple University

Title: Causes and consequences of threat-related memory fragmentation

Abstract:  Memories are not veridical records of prior experiences, but rather are influenced by affective states such as threat. For example, your memory for a walk home spent ruminating on recent upswings in violent crime may be more disorganized than a walk home spent enjoying the local architecture. While prior research has characterized threat’s influence on memory, this work often uses simple assessments (i.e., accuracy) of simple memoranda (i.e., static pictures). However, memory is a dynamic process that unfolds over time allowing for flexibility in both what we remember and how information is organized. In this talk, I will present recent work characterizing threat’s influence on the fragmentation of event memory. I will unpack these processes both through the lens of medial temporal lobe neurophysiology as well as cognitive/computational models of how items are bound to temporal contexts. Finally, I will unpack how threat-related memory fragmentation biases adaptive behavior in both normative and clinical populations.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Nadja Ging-Jehli - Post Doc - CLPS - Brown

Title: Cognitive & attentional mechanisms of cooperation: A diffusion model application with implications for ADHD research and computational psychiatry

Abstract: People’s cooperativeness depends on many factors such as their motives, cognition, experiences, and the situation they are in. To date, it is unclear how these factors interact and shape the decision to cooperate. Here, we present a computational account of cooperation that not only provides insights for the design of effective incentive structures but also redefines dismissed social-cognitive characteristics associated with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Leveraging game theory, we demonstrate that the source and magnitude of conflict between different motives affected the speed and frequency of cooperation. Integrating eye-tracking to measure motivation-based information processing shows that participants’ visual fixations on the gains of cooperation rather than its costs and risks predicted their cooperativeness. Using Bayesian hierarchical modeling, we find that a situation’s prosociality and participants’ past experience each bias the decision-making process distinctively. ADHD characteristics explain individual differences in responsiveness across contexts, highlighting the clinical importance of experimentally studying reactivity in social interactions.

Data Science, Computation, and Visualization (DSCOV) Workshops

Fridays at noon

These are one-hour skills-focused workshops, designed to be hands-on, so bring a laptop if you can. They are open to anyone, and any pre-requisite knowledge or resources will be announced beforehand.

Pizza will be available. Please RSVP below if you plan to attend in person.

February 3, 2023: Gene Annotation Resources in R

Presenter: Joselynn Wallace, Senior Genomics Data Scientist (OIT)

Prerequisites: None

Target Audience: Biological Researchers

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Professor Fen-Biao Gao from the UMass Chan Medical School will present “Understanding Pathogenic Mechanisms of C9ORF72-ALS/FTD: Insights from Drosophila and iPSC-Derived Patient Neurons”. This lecture is part of the 2023 Pathobiology Graduate Program Spring Seminar Series. ​​

Dr. David Boas, Director of the Neurophotonics Center and Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, will present a talk, “Post-stroke disruption in neuro-vascular responses predict behavioral outcomes.”

Abstract: Functional neuroimaging, which generally measures vascular responses to brain activity, is invaluable for monitoring stroke patients during recovery. However, the neurophysiological interpretations of these vascular signals remains a challenge, and is under active investigation, as the stroke almost always alters the observed vascular signals. In other words, we do not know the effect of stroke on neurovascular coupling. To study this question, we simultaneously captured neuronal activity, through fluorescence calcium imaging, and hemodynamics, through intrinsic optical signal imaging, during longitudinal stroke recovery. We found that photothrombotic stroke to somatosensory forelimb altered neurovascular coupling in the acute phase within the affected forelimb and peri-infarct regions. Neurovascular coupling was reestablished in the chronic phase and acute recovery of neurovascular coupling predicted behavioral outcome. Stroke also resulted in increases in the power of global brain oscillations, which showed distinct patterns between calcium and hemodynamics and that increased calcium excitability in the contralesional hemisphere was associated with increased intrahemispheric connectivity. Additionally, acute increases in hemodynamic oscillations were associated with improved behavioral outcomes. These acute hemodynamic biomarkers predicting behavioral outcomes will guide future preclinical studies of novel stroke treatments and eventually impact human studies of functional recovery and the impact of acute therapies.

Bio: David Boas, Ph.D. is Director of the Neurophotonics Center and the Arthur G.B. Metcalf Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. He received his BS in Physics at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute and PhD in Physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He was the founding President of the Society for Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy and founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neurophotonics published by SPIE. Dr. Boas was awarded the Britton Chance Award in Biomedical Optics in 2016 for his development of several novel, high-impact biomedical optical technologies in the neurosciences, as well as following through with impactful application studies, and fostering the widespread adoption of these technologies. He was elected a Fellow of AIMBE, SPIE, and OSA in 2017.

Join us for the official award ceremony for this year’s Brainstorm EEG Challenge. The winners will present their approaches and results, and we’ll have the opportunity to learn more about their work and celebrate their success.

This year’s winner are:

Grand Prize

Ryan Thorpe ($2,000)

RunnerUps

Darcy Diesburg ($500)
Chad Wiliams, Sebastian Musslick and Tom Holland ($500)

CLPS - Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Colloquium Series

Speaker: Dr. Serra Favila, Columbia University

Title: Transforming visual experiences into adaptive long-term memories

Abstract: Long-term memory allows humans to exploit information encountered in the past in order to behave more adaptively in the present. However, our memories are not perfect snapshots of our perceptual experiences. My research explores the cognitive and neural pressures that shape what perceptual information is stored in long-term memory and how this information is stored in a way that benefits behavior. In my talk, I will highlight a series of fMRI experiments that seek to understand neural transformations between visual perception and memory. First, I will present work demonstrating that competition between visual memories can lead to targeted differentiation of hippocampal traces that reduce memory interference in the future. Second, I will show evidence that the computational architecture of the visual system constrains the precision of mnemonic activity during recall, leading to systematic differences between perceptual and mnemonic activity even when memory conditions are optimal. Finally, I will discuss work investigating how hippocampal and visual cortical systems cooperate to deploy memory-guided shifts in attention that increase behavioral efficiency in the face of memory competition. These experiments establish a framework for developing a computational and biological understanding of human visual memory and its role in promoting adaptive behavior.

David Herzfeld, Postdoctoral Fellow, Dept. of Neurobiology at Duke University, will present a talk: “Leveraging circuit architecture & cell identification to understand the neural control of movement.”

Abstract: To understand how the brain controls movement, we need to develop strategies to deal with the multiple layers of complexity present in the brain. My approach combines behavioral observations, mathematical modeling, circuit dissection techniques, and large-scale neural recordings to link movement with its underlying neural processes. My strategy is to move from simple to more complex movements and from a brain structure where we have unparalleled knowledge of the underlying circuit, the cerebellum, forwards and backwards to the motor cortex, the sensory periphery, and the motor effectors. Beginning with quantitative analysis of movements of a simple effector, the eye, we show how the well characterized cerebellar circuit is organized to support two different oculomotor behaviors: saccades and smooth pursuit. First, our results describe how the primary output neurons of the cerebellar cortex, Purkinje cells, are organized to encode saccade kinematics. Then, using motor learning studies, we show that the link between Purkinje cell firing properties and adaptive motor behavior can be used to infer the organization of downstream neural circuits. Finally, we apply this logic to the complete cerebellar circuit during smooth pursuit eye movements, demonstrating a fundamental computation of the cerebellar circuit in the service of movement. From this starting point we will expand outwards: seeking to understand the control of more complex effectors and expanding beyond our well known circuit to develop a holistic account of motor control by the brain.

Bio: David Herzfeld received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, under the direction of Reza Shadmehr. In the Shadmehr Lab, David made two fundamental discoveries: describing how the brain stores a previously unknown memory of movement errors, as well as how the cerebellum, a region of the brain crucially responsible for motor performance, is organized to drive accurate movement of the eyes. David is currently a postdoctoral fellow with Stephen G. Lisberger in the Neurobiology Department at Duke University. His current NIH K99/R00 supported research asks how the cerebellar circuit transforms motor commands into movement.

Host: David Borton, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Engineering

Data Science, Computation, and Visualization (DSCOV) Workshops

Fridays at noon

These are one-hour skills-focused workshops, designed to be hands-on, so bring a laptop if you can. They are open to anyone, and any pre-requisite knowledge or resources will be announced beforehand.

Pizza will be available. Please RSVP below if you plan to attend in person.

January 27, 2023: Introduction to Processing, a flexible software sketchbook, and language for learning how to code

Presenter: Ellen Duong, Research Software Engineer (OIT)

Prerequisites: A basic understanding of Javascript is helpful but not required

Target Audience: Artists; Coding Beginners; Anyone interested in learning an art coding library

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

CLPS - Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Colloquium Series

Speaker: Dr. Jason Okonofua, University of California, Berkeley

Title: Sidelining Bias: A Situationist Approach to Mitigating Real World Inequities

Abstract: It has become common practice to conceptualize bias as an automatic response, cultivated through exposure to bias in society. From this perspective, combating bias requires reducing a proclivity for bias within individuals, as in many implicit-bias training efforts common in schools and corporations. We introduce an alternative approach that begins with the presumption that people are inherently complex, with multiple, often contradictory, selves and goals. When the person is conceptualized this way, it is possible to ask when biased selves are likely to emerge and whether this bias can be sidelined—that is, whether situations can be altered in potent ways that elevate alternative selves and goals that people will endorse and for which bias would be nonfunctional. Using both classic and contemporary examples, we show how sidelining bias has led to meaningful improvements in real-world outcomes, including higher academic achievement and reduced school suspensions, less recidivism to jail, and less stereotyping in mass advertisements.

NEUROSCIENCE GRADUATE PROGRAM

BENCH TO BEDSIDE SEMINAR SERIES

PRESENTS:

Edward Neilan, MD, PhD

Chief Medical and Scientific Officer

National Organization for Rare Disorders

“Rare Diseases: Challenges and Opportunities”

Host: Judy Liu, MD, PhD

Marcuvitz Auditorium

Sidney Frank Hall, Room 220

Reception to follow in SFH 3rd Floor Atrium

Organized by the Brown University Center for Translational Neuroscience

CLPS - Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Colloquium Series

Speaker: Dr. Emma Armstrong-Carter, UNC Chapel Hill

Title: The implications of children’s contributions to the family for their wellbeing and educational opportunities: Findings from large-scale, interdisciplinary, partnership-research

Abstract:  This presentation focuses on children’s and adolescent’s lived experiences helping and caregiving for the family in diverse settings. Contributing to the family is a daily experience shared by many children worldwide, yet little is known about how it impacts children’s development. My research addresses this gap via a large-scale, interdisciplinary, applied approach that bridges developmental psychology and community health, and partners with local educators and policy makers in Rhode Island. I first present descriptive evidence about children’s and adolescents’ experiences of helping and caregiving for the family in homes with diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. I emphasize the importance of studying young people’s contributions to the family in the context of their local cultures and communities. I then discuss how youths’ experiences supporting the family are related to their wellbeing and educational opportunities. My longitudinal and partnership-based projects suggest that supporting the family divergently relates to wellbeing and educational success among different family cultures and socioeconomic circumstances. I highlight key developmental processes that may underlie links between contributing to the family and wellbeing. I next describe how we are designing and testing novel interventions at scale to support the 5.4 million children in the US who are involved in ongoing caregiving at home - for a family member who has a disability, chronic illness, or aging-related needs. I conclude with my robust plan for continuing to research (1) the diversity of children’s experiences helping and caregiving for the family (2) the link between children’s help and caregiving for the family and their wellbeing and educational opportunities and (3) how to support the wellbeing of diverse caregiving children via family, community health, and educational processes.

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

CLPS - Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Colloquium Series

Speaker: Dr. Kaue Costa, National Institute on Drug Abuse

Title: Neural mechanisms of model-based learning.

Abstract: Many current theories of learning posit the existence of two major categories of learning mechanisms: model-free learning, which is based on the association of outcome value to predictive actions and cues, and model-based learning, which involves the creation of mental models, or cognitive maps, of the relational structure of reality. These two forms of learning are thought to be engaged in separate behavioral contexts and to depend on distinct neural substrates. In my talk, I will present a series of studies targeting the orbitofrontal cortex and the midbrain dopamine system where I demonstrate that these supposedly separate mechanisms may be more overlapping than previously thought, both at a physiological and computational level, and I will discuss the implications of these findings to the understanding of learning and decision making.

CLPS - Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Colloquium Series

Speaker: Dr. Michael Kraus, Yale University

Title: The Narrative of Racial Progress: Realistic Perceptions and Progress Toward Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Abstract:  In this talk, I will provide a broad overview of our research on the narrative of racial progress—the tendency for Americans to believe in the linear, automatic, and even natural march forward to racial equity and justice. The talk will begin with an overall orientation to my research approach to inequality. From there, I will describe the theoretical background of this narrative, highlighting the psychological and structural drivers of the tendency to overestimate racial equality and progress toward achieving it. Along the way I will summarize the state of the evidence in support of racial progress beliefs. Having provided this summary, I will conclude by discussing some of our emerging efforts to promote more realistic conceptions of racial inequality, and how narratives of racial progress act as barriers to the actual achievement of racial equity.

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

CLPS - Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Colloquium Series

Speaker: Maureen Ritchey

Title: Pathways to episodic memory: Cognitive and brain processes that shape what we remember

Abstract: Episodic memories are intrinsically multidimensional, integrating information about the places, agents, and objects that make up an event, and representing each of these event details with varying degrees of specificity. In my research, I am interested in understanding what drives differences in the quality of episodic memories. I will discuss three main ways that my lab and I have approached this problem. First, I will present evidence that dissociable cortical networks are flexibly engaged to support memory for different kinds of details. Second, I will consider how these details are interrelated in memory and how they predict the subjective experience of memory. Finally, I will discuss how the modulation of memory networks can explain biases in the way that we remember past events.

Join us for the Carney Institute Holiday Party, featuring a cookie decorating station!

Please RSVP below.

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Carney Conversation: The LINE AD Study

Register Here

Join Carney’s Director Diane Lipscombe and Associate Director Chris Moore for a Carney Conversation with John Sedivy, associate dean and director of the University’s Center for the Biology of Aging, and Meghan Riddle, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior. They’ll explore the promising new LINE AD study which is investigating the efficacy of using nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, traditionally employed to treat HIV, to decrease age-related inflammation in the brain due to Alzheimer’s disease.

Speaker: Lakshmi Narasimhan Govindarajan, Brown University

Title: Attractor Dynamics in Large Scale Recurrent Neural Networks

Advisor: Professor Thomas Serre

~ zoom link information to the meeting sent to clps all ~

If you are not part of the CLPS Department and would like to attend, please contact the department’s graduate student coordinator at least 24 hours in advance.

Data & Donuts

Join the DSI at 3:00 pm on Friday, December 9, for data talks and donuts. The format of this series will allow colleagues to connect informally and will feature short talks on research or campus resources in data science.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Amrita Lamba - Ph.D. student - CLPS Department - Brown University

Title: The (in)flexible social brain: how context and individual differences shape learning under uncertainty

Abstract: Adaptive social behavior requires remarkable cognitive flexibility. Since we cannot directly observe the contents of other people’s minds, the key challenge of social learning is to find latent features that enable us to tailor our behavior to specific individuals despite uncertainty. I will present work showing how social learning differs across contexts and individuals, with a focus on understanding how neural credit assignment (i.e., attributing outcomes to the correct cause) and uncertainty aversion impact learning. First, I will show that adults are more precise in crediting social agents compared to nonsocial objects, a process that is mediated by high-fidelity (i.e., distinct and consistent) neural representations in the PFC. These differences are not driven by the strength of learning signals (i.e., stronger prediction errors) as has been previously claimed, but by stronger attribution of those learning signals to distinct neural representations, enabling increased behavioral specificity. I next will discuss whether adolescents, who are undergoing a period of rapid social learning, assign credit differently than adults. Our results suggest that adolescents assign credit more diffusely across social agents, which reduces the specificity of causal learning but also allows for increased flexibility. In the second part of my talk, I will focus on how learning differs in individuals averse to uncertainty and therefore demonstrate behavioral inflexibility in uncertain settings. Prior work shows that relative uncertainty speeds learning by prioritizing the impact of recent outcomes on one’s beliefs, a process which is putatively linked to phasic norepinephrine (NE), often indexed through increased pupil-linked arousal. I will present data from an on-going study using a dynamic social learning task coupled with pupillometry measures to disentangle the impact of uncertainty on NE modulation and how this impacts learning in individuals with generalized anxiety. Across this talk I hope to establish that several factors, including differences in credit assignment and uncertainty aversion, determine how flexibly or inflexibly we leverage social cues to scaffold adaptive learning.

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Meghan Willcoxon, CLPS PhD student, Brown University

Title: Effects of attention and task-relevance in crowd following

Abstract: Models of collective motion in human crowds tend to predict averaging behavior; that is, pedestrians will align their direction of travel (heading) to that of the crowd mean. However, when following a group of friends in a crowd, anecdotal evidence suggests that we can easily attend to, track, and follow our friends. In other words, the heading of other neighbors in the crowd does not influence our own heading when we choose to walk with our friends. This suggests that we can entirely segment a subgroup of neighbors and ignore the rest of the crowd. However, the exact mechanisms of such segmentation are unknown: What is the role of attention when we follow our friends? Is spontaneous averaging impervious to attentional control? Do we group neighbors to facilitate tracking ease? To investigate these questions, we employed a modified multiple-object tracking paradigm in virtual crowds and found that while the compulsion to follow the crowd mean is robust, attention to familiar neighbors (friends) biases pedestrian locomotion spontaneously.

We are excited to host two Brown Graduate School alumni who work in the field of intellectual property (IP) and patent law. Our guests, Dr. Diana Borgas, a patent agent, and Dr. Nathan Martin, a technology specialist, are both employed at Wolf, Greenfield, and Sacks, one of the top 10 law firms in the country, devoted to IP and patent law. Expect a brief presentation followed by a Q&A session. The seminar will be followed by a causal, in-person reception.

RSVP Form: https://forms.gle/pQFr5ry8MMZwscwx7

Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

We are pleased to announce our Virtual Panel on Careers Outside Academia. Two amazing Brown graduates will be joining us:

Dr. Daniel Ullman (CLPS): UX Researcher, Meta Reality Labs
Danny Ullman is a UX Researcher at Meta Reality Labs. He works on privacy research for Augmented Reality (AR) and wearable products, like Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses. His research centered on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in the Yale Social Robotics Lab and the Brown Social Cognitive Science Research Lab, with a focus on human-robot trust for his dissertation. Together with his graduate advisor Bertram F. Malle, he developed the Multi-Dimensional Measure of Trust (MDMT)—a model and measure of trust applicable to robot agents and agents more generally. His graduate research was conducted under the Brown University Humanity-Centered Robotics Initiative (HCRI).

Dr. Rahilla Tarfa (GPP): M.D. Student
Dr. Rahilla Tarfa is a first-year resident in otolaryngology at the University of Washington. In 2017, Dr. Tarfa completed her Ph.D. in the lab of Dr. Zayd Khalliq at NINDS, NIH, where she studied the excitability properties of midbrain dopamine neuron subpopulations. She earned her M.D. through the University of Pittsburgh MSTP in 2022.

The format will be similar to the previous panels, where you will have the opportunity to hear a bit of background from the speakers and then ask questions. Zoom information is below.

Feel free to reach out with any comments or questions!

Join us for this 6-part series exploring implementation science, its methodology, and application. Local and national experts will share talks on de-implementation, implementation mechanisms, community engagement, health equity, dissemination strategies, and global implementation science.

Tuesday, December 6, 2022:

Alethea Desrosiers, PhD: “Applying Implementation Science to Address the Global Mental Health Treatment Gap”

Mental health disorders are the second largest contributor to the global burden of disease among youth and adults. This burden is compounded in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) and other low resource settings due to the widening mental health treatment gap, which is particularly pronounced in LMICs with histories of violence and loss. While many promising evidence-based mental interventions have been implemented in LMICs, their reach and sustainability are often limited. Applying an Implementation science lens to global mental health research and practice has the potential to better address the significant gaps in mental health service access in LMICs by designing for implementation and sustainment earlier in the process. This talk will discuss how implementation science processes and approaches can be applied to improve the adoption, reach and sustainment of evidence-based mental health interventions among vulnerable populations of youth residing in LMICs, with case examples from Sierra Leone and Colombia.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Alethea Desrosiers is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University. Her work focuses on implementation science in the global mental health context. Dr. Desrosiers is the PI of a newly funded National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) R01 hybrid implementation-effectiveness trial to investigate implementation of an evidence-based mental health intervention delivered by teachers in Sierra Leone’s secondary schools, and a Hilton Foundation award to culturally adapt and pilot test an evidence-based mental health intervention delivered within entrepreneurship training to forcibly displaced Colombian and Venezuelan migrant youth in Colombia. She also leads a NIMH R21 study, applying user-centered design to develop Mobile Health tools to improve delivery quality of a family home visiting intervention delivered by community health workers in Sierra Leone.

Join the Carney Institute for its Brain Science External Postdoc Seminar Series, featuring Chen Ran, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School.

Abstract: In vivo brainstem two-photon calcium imaging analyses of sensory inputs from the internal organs reveal fundamental features of the interoceptive nervous system.

Speaker: Alexander Fengler , Brown University

Title: Likelihood Approximations for Bayesian Analysis of Sequential Sampling Models

Advisor: Professor Michael Frank

~ zoom link information to the meeting sent to clps all ~

If you are not a part of the CLPS Department and would like to attend, please contact the department’s graduate student coordinator at least 24 hours in advance.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Jazlyn Nketia, CLPS PhD Student, Brown University

Title: The Unique Adaptability of Working Memory to Both Positive and Negative Environmental Experiences

Abstract : Flexibility in rule use is crucial for learning, decision making, and future planning. Children that can flexibly use rules in novel contexts benefit both socially and academically. Here we test the hypothesis that rule-guided behavior (RGB) develops in a manner relevant to the contextual lived experience of children. We generated a novel task to test RGB in 4-7-year-old children in (a) two analogous computerized and naturalistic tasks in an American sample of children, (b) across versions of the same task where we manipulated task reward and choice components. We also explored the sociopolitical and scientific implications of this work in the context of a Jordanian sample of children. Our data provided preliminary evidence that RGB reflects the similarity of the testing context and children’s daily experiences outside of the laboratory. To further test this idea, we are working with the Ministry of Education in Ghana to test our western RGB task,as well as a culturally-relevant version with the same task demands. We began this series of studies by conducting an exploratory qualitative focus group study with parents and teachers and are using a deductive thematic content analysis to develop a codebook to understand the lived experiences of Ghanaian children. We plan to use these data to develop a culturally-appropriate version of our RGB task for comparison with our western version. These methods and findings will be discussed in the context of the expansion of developmental science into global contexts and call for special consideration of measurement and generalizability biases in investigations with human subjects.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Mariam Aly - Assistant Professor - Columbia University

Title: How hippocampal memory shapes, and is shaped by, attention
 

Abstract: Attention modulates what we see and remember. Memory affects what we attend to and perceive. Despite this connection in behavior, little is known about the mechanisms that link attention and memory in the brain. One key structure that may be at the interface between attention and memory is the hippocampus. Here, I’ll explore the hypothesis that the relational representations of the hippocampus allow it to critically contribute to bidirectional interactions between attention and memory. First, I’ll show — in a series of human fMRI studies — that attention creates state-dependent patterns of activity in the hippocampus, and that these representations predict both online attentional behavior and memory formation. Then, I’ll provide neuropsychological evidence that hippocampal damage impairs performance on attention tasks that tax relational representations, particularly spatial relational representations. I will then provide pharmacological evidence that hippocampal contributions to attention and perception may be mediated by cholinergic modulation — a switch that can toggle the hippocampus between internally and externally oriented states. Finally, I’ll demonstrate that hippocampal memories enable preparation for upcoming attentional states and may help resolve competition between similar memories to guide attention. Together, this line of work highlights the tight links between attention and memory — links that are established, at least in part, by the hippocampus.

Data Science, Computation, and Visualization (DSCOV) Workshops

Fridays at noon

These are one-hour skills-focused workshops, designed to be hands-on, so bring a laptop if you can. They are open to anyone, and any pre-requisite knowledge or resources will be announced beforehand. More info and schedule here.

Pizza is available (please RSVP below for catering purposes), or bring your own lunch if you wish!

December 2: PySpark

Presenter: Aisulu Omar, Senior Data Scientist, Office of Information Technology

Prerequisites:

• Familiarity with Jupyter Notebook, Git, GitHub, Anaconda, pip, and basic machine learning algorithms.
• Basic knowledge of Python
• A GitHub account
• An Oscar account

This is a drop-in session where CCV staff members will be available to answer questions about Brown’s research computing resources (Oscar, Stronghold, Globus) and help with any high-performance computing (HPC) issues you might have.

Michael P. O’Hara, Chair of the Wargaming Department at the U.S. Naval War College, will present a talk, “The Theory of the Game: Computational Power and Human Decision Making.”

Abstract: This talk explores the application of technology to aid human decision making in the context of war games and simulations. For decades, increasing computational power and the availability of data have promised to improve timely analyses and aid decisions in the complex context of war. Yet, for all its benefit, technology misapplied can obscure the mechanisms of human decision. To the victorious Admiral Nimitz reflecting on World War II, the analog war games of the interwar period were of such value for developing the Navy’s strategic thinking that the only surprise was the kamikaze. Since 1958, efforts to apply computing to military war games have sought formulas for victory. Yet, in the complex strategic interactions of conflict, greater computational power may not support human decision makers in the ways intended without a shared understanding of the theory of the game and a thorough understanding of its purpose.

Bio: Captain Michael O’Hara serves as Chair, War Gaming Department at the U.S. Naval War College. His work focuses on strategy, decision making, and emerging technologies. He is a career naval officer with operational and leadership experience in naval aviation and naval intelligence. As a faculty member in the Department of Strategy and Policy, he was founding Director of the NWC Future Warfighting Symposium. He previously held a National Security Fellowship at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. He holds an M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University and an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Rhode Island. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and Naval War College.

This seminar is part of ENGN1931J – “Societal Impact of Emerging Technologies”. Host: Prof. Arto Nurmikko, School of Engineering

Carney Methods Meetup: Closed loop fMRI

Join the Carney Institute for Brain Science for a Carney Methods Meetup featuring Elizabeth Lorenc, staff scientist in the Brown Behavior and Neuroimaging Core (BNC), who will discuss providing neurofeedback through closed-loop fMRI, and related resources available through the BNC. Carney Methods Meetups are informal gatherings focused on methods for brain science, moderated by Jason Ritt, Carney’s scientific director of quantitative neuroscience. Videos and notes from previous Meetups are available on the [Carney Institute website](https://www.brown.edu/carney/news-events/carney-methods-meetups).

Please note: Authenticated Brown IDs are required to join the Zoom.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.

Speaker: Ruth Kramer - Associate Professor - Georgetown University

Title: A critical investigation of phonological gender assignment across languages

Abstract: According to classic typological research, grammatical gender can be assigned to nouns in several different ways. Gender can be assigned semantically (depending on social gender identity, animacy, etc.), morphologically (depending on the presence of a specific affix), or phonologically (e.g., depending on the final segment of the noun). In this talk, I take a critical look at the last member of this list: phonological gender assignment. I present the results of a crosslinguistic survey of phonological gender assignment as well as case studies of multiple languages that allegedly use phonological gender assignment including Hausa (Chadic), Gujarati (Indo-Aryan), Apurinã (Maipurean), and Guébie (Kru), among others. I argue that the crosslinguistic trends and the case studies point towards phonology *not* being involved in grammatical gender assignment and, more importantly, that a phonological gender assignment analysis is less explanatory than alternative approaches. In Distributed Morphology, phonological gender assignment is predicted to be difficult at best because gender is assigned during the syntactic derivation and the syntax lacks phonological information. This result therefore provide support for Distributed Morphology, and against theories where gender is assigned in the lexicon with access to phonological information. I close the talk with plans for future work to investigate additional languages with (alleged) phonological gender assignment.

Call for Applications! Apply for the Advance-CTR Mentored Research Awards. We’re funding two scholars for a two-year Mentored Research Award which includes the following benefits:

1. Mentored Research Scholars receive at least 50% protected time up to $90,000 to conduct clinical or translational research projects for two years.
2. Scholars are awarded an additional $25,000 each year specifically earmarked for education or research supplies.
3. The program provides mentoring and specialized training that prepare scholars to make significant advances in interdisciplinary strategies devoted to clinical and translational research.

About the Mentored Research Awards

The Mentored Research Awards target early-career investigators who are planning on applying for career-development awards (NIH K awards or equivalent) and launch independent research careers. Awardees receive protected time for research all within a structured, 2-year mentorship program.

Key Dates & Deadlines

• November 17, 2022: Last day to schedule calls with leadership
• November 29, 2022: Preliminary applications due
• February 6, 2023: Invited, full proposals due

The anticipated performance period is August 1, 2023 to July 31, 2025.

Application Resources

Don’t go at it alone. Our Application Resources Page has information on scheduling a call with our program leadership to discuss your questions, two examples from investigators who have successfully applied to the program and other application resources.