Neuro-CoE Seminar Series
Lecture Abstract
The Midbrain Reticular Formation (MRF) is the third largest subcortical region by volume in the mouse and interconnects with diverse areas of the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain. Despite its central position, it has been overlooked in studies of perception and cognition. In this talk, I will describe our work to dissect the role and organization of the MRF in visual decision-making using large-scale electrophysiology, modern anatomical approaches including spatial transcriptomics, and a novel context-dependent behavioral task for mice. These approaches reveal the MRF as a critical hub in the distributed circuits underlying our ability to flexibly interact with our world.
About the Speaker
Dr. Nick Steinmetz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurobiology & Biophysics at the University of Washington in Seattle and a member of the International Brain Laboratory. Prior to starting his own lab, he completed a PhD in Neuroscience at Stanford University studying visual attention with Dr. Tirin Moore and Dr. Kwabena Boahen. As a postdoc, he worked on Neuropixels probe development and distributed coding in the mouse brain at University College London with Dr. Kenneth Harris and Dr. Matteo Carandini.
The Steinmetz Lab focuses on understanding the neural circuits and systems that underlie perception and cognition across the brain. They approach these problems with a combination of large-scale electrophysiology with Neuropixels probes, calcium imaging across neocortical areas, and systematic optogenetic manipulations, all in combination with visual decision-making tasks for mice. Dr. Steinmetz’s work has been recognized with the Pew Biomedical Scholar award, the Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in Neuroscience, and an NSF CAREER award.
The Columbia/AFRL Center of Excellence on the Neuroscience of Decision Making (Neuro-COE) represents a multidisciplinary, multimodal, and multiscale effort for elucidating the neural mechanisms of decision-making, especially under stress, time pressure, and fatigue. It represents a collaboration between biomedical engineers, neuroscientists, computer scientists and psychologists, both at Columbia University and the Air Force Research Laboratory. Join the Directors Paul Sajda and Qi Wang as we hear from experts in the field and learn from their insights.
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Learn about the Air Force Center of Excellence in the Neuroscience of Decision-Making