Lecture Notes on Neural Circuits and Scientists

Flashcards about neural circuits and scientists.

Who is Allen Selverston, and what is he known for?

Scientist whose lab described much of the circuitry of the lobster stomatogastric ganglion (STG).

What is a key feature of the pyloric CPG in the lobster STG?

Most neurons are motor neurons

Who is Eve Marder, and what area of the STG did she study?

Scientist who studied the neuromodulation of the STG.

List four functions of local neuromodulators in the STG.

Turn CPGs on/off, Change spike and cycle frequency, Change duty cycle and synaptic strength, Alter the output of the network

Who is Alan Roberts, and what did he demonstrate in Xenopus embryos?

Scientist who studied Xenopus (African clawed frog) embryos and demonstrated that swimming is activated by tactile stimulation.

Which sensory neurons in Xenopus embryos respond to skin touch and trigger swimming?

RB (Rohan-Beard) sensory neurons

Which neurons in Xenopus embryos inhibit swimming when the cement gland is contacted?

mr (reticulospinal) neurons

Who is Sten Grillner, and what did he demonstrate about spinal CPGs in lampreys?

Scientist who studied locomotion in lampreys and demonstrated spinal CPG could survive and function in vitro.

What are edge cells in lampreys, and what is their function?

Spinal mechanoreceptors in the lamprey that detect stretch and entrain the CPG.

Who is Terrence (Terry) Sejnowski, and what is he known for?

Scientist known for the NETtalk model, an early example of a connectionist artificial neural network.

Who are Warren McCulloch & Walter Pitts, and what is the title of their landmark paper?

Authors of the landmark theoretical paper: “A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity”.

Describe the output of the McCulloch-Pitts formal neuron.

Binary output: fires when the sum of excitatory and inhibitory inputs exceeds threshold

Who is Jerome (Jerry) Lettvin, and what paper is he the lead author of?

Lead author of “What the frog’s eye tells the frog’s brain”.

Who is Fernando Nottebohm, and what did he discover in bird song nuclei?

Scientist who discovered sexual dimorphism in bird song nuclei (HVc and RA).

Who are Konrad Lorenz & Niko Tinbergen, and what concepts did they pioneer the study of?

Scientists who pioneered the study of fixed action patterns (FAPs) and innate releasing mechanisms (IRMs).

Who is Peter Marler, and what concept did he propose regarding song learning?

Scientist who proposed the concept of an auditory template—an innate model guiding what song to learn.

Who is Victor Hamburger, and what did he first describe in chick embryos?

Scientist who first described embryonic motility (EM) in chick embryos.

Who is Gabriel Horn, and what phenomenon did he study in chicks?

Scientist who studied visual imprinting in chicks.

Who is Charles Sherrington, and what did he use electrical stimulation for in chimpanzees?

Scientist who used electrical stimulation in deeply anesthetized chimpanzees to map the motor cortex.

Who is Wilder Penfield, and what procedure did he develop?

Scientist who developed the Montreal Procedure and performed electrical stimulation of the exposed cortex in awake epilepsy patients.

Who is Benjamin Libet, and what did his studies on readiness potentials suggest?

Scientist who studied readiness potentials via EEG and suggested that the brain initiates movement before we are consciously aware.

Who is Ed Evarts, and what technique did he use to identify corticospinal tract neurons (CTNs) in awake animals?

Scientist who used antidromic stimulation to identify corticospinal tract neurons (CTNs) in awake animals.

Who is Apostolos Georgopoulos, and what did he pioneer studies on in the primary motor cortex?

Scientist who pioneered studies on neuronal population vectors in primary motor cortex.

Who is John Chapin, and what did he implant in rats to study brain-machine interface control?

Scientist who implanted rats with multi-electrode arrays in MI cortex and VL thalamus to study brain-machine interface control.

Who is Miguel Nicolelis, and what did his lab help establish regarding cortical control of movement?

Scientist whose lab helped establish the feasibility of direct cortical control of movement in real time, using population-level neural recordings.