Thanos Siapas
California Institute of Technology
Hippocampal Dynamics and Memory Processing
12:00 pm, Monday 20 November 2017
Location: Oxford Martin School
Abstract:
The hippocampus is a brain circuit that plays a critical role in memory formation. Hippocampal activity during awake behavior and REM sleep is characterized by the presence of theta oscillations, while activity in quiet wakefulness and slow-wave sleep is associated with ripples—high frequency oscillations associated with population bursts. This talk will describe the organization of theta oscillations across the hippocampal circuit, and experiments aimed at understanding the mechanisms underlying ripple bursts and their functional role in memory processing.
Biography:
Thanos Siapas received his B.S. degrees in Mathematics and Electrical Science and Engineering, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, from MIT. He did postdoctoral work in behavioral electrophysiology in Matt Wilson’s lab at MIT, and joined the faculty at Caltech in 2002. He is currently Professor of Computation and Neural Systems. His lab focuses on the study of information processing across networks of neurons with emphasis on the neuronal mechanisms that underlie learning and memory formation