Abstract:
As an animal explores an environment it creates memories of its experiences. These memories are useful because they can be retrieved to help animal make to predictions about future events. Adaptive behaviour engages both memory formation and memory-based prediction, but how these two functions are expressed and coordinated remains unclear. In this talk I will discuss work from our laboratory that is helping us understand the structure of representations of past, present, and potential future in the hippocampus and how these representations are coordinated with activity elsewhere in the brain.
Biography:
Loren Frank is Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and a Professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is also the Director of the Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience at UCSF. He received his B.A. in Psychology and Cognitive studies from Carleton College, his Ph.D. in Systems Neuroscience and Computation from M.I.T. and did post-doctoral research at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University. His laboratory uses a combination of techniques to study the neural bases of learning, memory and decision-making. In particular, his work focuses on the hippocampus and related structures, brain areas critical for forming and retrieving memories for the events of daily life. He also works in close collaboration with colleagues from Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories to develop new technologies to understand how the brain works and how to fix it when it is not working properly. These technologies include flexible polymer electrodes that make it possible to record from large numbers of neurons for months at a time. Dr Frank has received numerous awards for his scientific discoveries and his mentoring, including fellowships from the Sloan, McKnight and Merck Foundations as well as the Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award, the University of Indiana Gill Young Investigator Award, the UCSF Faculty Mentoring Award, and the College Mentors for Kids Inspire Award.