Abstract:
The mammalian nervous system has evolved to generate a wide variety of actions essential for survival. From object manipulation and tool use to complex locomotion and prey capture, the brain continuously processes sensory information to select, initiate and adapt movements to meet task demands. Our overarching goal is to understand the circuit mechanisms that underly these processes, with a focus on how distributed brain regions coordinate their activities to initiate and control purposive movements. To do this we, we employ a multi-scale system neuroscience approach bridging synaptic, circuit and behavioural scales using the mouse as a tractable model of mammalian motor control. In this talk, I will discuss how these approaches have led to a deeper understanding of the role of thalamocortical interactions in movement execution, the extent to which cortical dynamics represent movement information and how movement specificity is organized across different motor cortical output channels.
Biography:
Ian Duguid is the Professor of Cellular and Systems Neuroscience at the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences, and Deputy Director of the Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain (SIDB) at the University of Edinburgh. He received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the London School of Pharmacy working in the lab of Trevor Smart where he investigated presynaptic plasticity mechanisms in the cerebellum. He performed his postdoctoral work with Michael Häusser at UCL investigating sensory information processing in single cerebellar neurons in vivo before starting his own research group at the University of Edinburgh, which explores how the nervous system plans, executes and updates motor actions.