Brains, Behavior, Computation and Thought Journal Club

Date: 

Wednesday, October 14, 2015, 7:00pm

Location: 

NW 243

Sponsored by Harvard's Center for Brain Science, we have formed the Brains, Behavior, Computation and Thought Journal Club, where graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in CBS laboratories have a forum to discuss key papers in neuroscience.

Our next event will be next Wednesday, October 14th at 7 PM (based on our survey, this remains the most popular time).
Northwest Laboratories, ROOM 243 (please note, the doors lock at 7 PM, so please arrive ~ 5min early!)

Maz Zonouzi, a post-doc in the Arlotta lab will present "Labelling and optical erasure of synaptic memory traces in the motor cortex" (Nature, 2015; Abstract below).

Please note if you will be attending by signing up here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uCWCZ6xSmNw5tFLJHJWDFzM3TrtJs_yq...

Here are the upcoming events:

November 18th:  Noah Petit from the Harvey lab
December 9th: Dragana Rogulja (Rogulja lab)
January 13th:  Steffen Wolff from the Ölveczky Lab

As usual, dinner and drinks will be provided. We look forward to seeing you next week!

Best Regards,
Mackenzie & Alexander
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Full Paper: http://www.nature.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/nature/journal/v525/n756...

Paper abstract: Dendritic spines are the major loci of synaptic plasticity and are considered as possible structural correlates of memory. Nonetheless, systematic manipulation of specific subsets of spines in the cortex has been unattainable, and thus, the link between spines and memory has been correlational. We developed a novel synaptic optoprobe, AS-PaRac1 (activated synapse targeting photoactivatable Rac1), that can label recently potentiated spines specifically, and induce the selective shrinkage of AS-PaRac1-containing spines. In vivo imaging of AS-PaRac1 revealed that a motor learning task induced substantial synaptic remodelling in a small subset of neurons. The acquired motor learning was disrupted by the optical shrinkage of the potentiated spines, whereas it was not affected by the identical manipulation of spines evoked by a distinct motor task in the same cortical region. Taken together, our results demonstrate that a newly acquired motor skill depends on the formation of a task-specific dense synaptic ensemble.