When: Apr 29th, 2021 – 3:00 pm

Where: Zoom meeting

Abstract: Through the combination of in vivo optical imaging and chronic expression of genetically encoded calcium indicators it is now feasible to directly ‘watch’ brain activity patterns related to specific behaviors. I will introduce wide-field calcium imaging and multi-fiber photometry as two complementary methods that enable measurements across mouse neocortex and in large sets of subcortical regions, respectively. Specific patterns of brain-wide signal flow that occur in mice performing whisker-based or auditory sensory discrimination tasks will be discussed, highlighting salient patterns related to short-term memory. In addition, taking advantage of chronic measurements over weeks, I will present salient changes in brain dynamics that relate to task learning.

Short bio: Fritjof Helmchen received his Diploma in Physics from the University of Heidelberg. He completed his PhD thesis in Neuroscience at the May-Planck-Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg and received his doctorate from the University of Göttingen in 1996. As a postdoc, Dr. Helmchen worked at the Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, NJ, where he pioneered in vivo applications of two-photon microscopy. He then returned to the Max-Planck-Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg, heading a junior research group from 2000-2005. In 2005 Dr. Helmchen was appointed Professor of Neurophysiology and Co-Director at the Brain Research Institute of the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Dr. Helmchen’s research is centered on the further development and application of imaging techniques for the study of neural network dynamics and neural computations as the basis of animal perception and behaviour.

When: Mar 19th, 2021 – 6:00 pm

Where: Zoom Meeting and live on Facebook

Abstract: La “Brain awareness week” è una ricorrenza annuale dedicata a sollecitare la pubblica consapevolezza nei confronti della ricerca sul cervello. All’iniziativa, coordinata dalla Dana Foundation, partecipano società neuroscientifiche, università, istituti ed enti di ricerca di tutto il mondo.

L’Università di Padova in occasione della Brain Awareness Week, la settimana internazionale di divulgazione delle neuroscienze, propone una serie di incontri online: gli interventi sono tenuti da giovani ricercatori e ricercatrici dell’Università di Padova, appartenenti a diversi dipartimenti e accomunati dallo studio del cervello. I relatori accompagnano dunque nell’affascinante mondo dei neuroni, nelle loro interazioni sino ai processi cognitivi alla base del nostro pensiero.

Link alla notizia su “ilbo live”

When: Mar 18th, 2021 – 3:00 pm

Where: Zoom meeting

Abstract: In the last 30 years blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) fMRI has taught us a great detail about human brain organisation. However, it only tells us where brain activity is changing without telling us by how much or what the baseline level of activity is. We and others are working on fMRI methods to map the absolute rate of cerebral metabolic oxygen consumption as a marker of the physiological state of brain tissue in health and disease. Development of these methods has resulted in a toolkit for assessing oxygen consumption and cerebrovascular function (including vascular reactivity and arterial compliance) that is yielding interesting results in our pilot clinical studies in epilepsy and multiple sclerosis and in the study of the healthy brain. These approaches have the potential to take fMRI to a new level of quantification of brain function required for experimental medicine and future clinical application.

Short bio: Richard is a physicist who has always worked at the interface of physics and physiology. He specialised in cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging for his PhD at Cambridge University. In 2000 he changed from imaging the heart to the brain with a move to Oxford University as a post-doctoral research fellow, (Wellcome and MRC research fellowships). From 2006 he developed his research group at Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre with a focus on understanding drug effects on human brain function and looking for ways to quantify brain function using functional MRI approaches, based on sensitivity to blood oxygenation in the human brain. This has led recently to a new magnetic resonance imaging toolkit with the possibility to interrogate, in detail, the function of brain blood vessels and to measure the amount of oxygen fuel that the human brain is using in health and disease. At the end of 2019 he moved to ITAB (Institute of Advanced Biomedical Technologies) and the Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences at the University of Chieti-Pescara in Italy, as full professor of applied physics (Professore Ordinario – chiamata diretta).

When: Mar 5th, 2021 – 9:00 am

Where: Zoom meeting (will be published on Mar 5th). Also live on the Accademia’s channel

Abstract: L’Intelligenza Artificiale è una delle tecnologie che sta trasformando la nostra società e molti aspetti della nostra vita quotidiana. Ha già prodotto molti effetti benefici e può essere sorgente di considerevole prosperità economica. Tuttavia, pone problemi riguardanti, in varia misura, l’occupazione, la riservatezza dei dati, la “privacy”, la violazione di valori etici e la fiducia nei risultati. Problematiche simili, con riferimento a problemi occupazionali, di sicurezza e di possibile violazione di valori etici, si pongono anche per quanto riguarda le trasformazioni che avvengono nella società a seguito dello sviluppo, intimamente connesso a quello dell’AI, dei metodi della robotica e dell’automazione della produzione industriale.

In programma l’intervento del prof. Corbetta dal titolo “Il ruolo dell’attività spontanea nell’ architettura funzionale del cervello e nella cognizione”.

Link alla notizia nel sito dell’Accademia.

When: March 2nd, 2021 – 5:30 pm

Where: Zoom meeting

PLEASE NOTE. Mandatory enrollment:

To attend the seminar and get the ECM credits you must:

• enroll by sending an email to cl.neurologica@aopd.veneto.it
• have your webcam turned on throughout the whole meeting

Short bio: Professore di parassitologia molecolare all’Imperial College dal 2000, Andrea Crisanti è attualmente Direttore del Dipartimento di Medicina Molecolare e del Servizio di Microbiologia e Virologia, Azienda Ospedale – Università Padova.

Dopo la laurea in Medicina all’Università di Roma La Sapienza e un dottorato presso l’Istituto di Immunologia di Basilea, Andrea Crisanti ha aperto la strada alla biologia molecolare del vettore della malaria umana Anopheles gambiae contribuendo alla conoscenza genetica e molecolare del parassita della malaria e del suo vettore. Ha ricevuto numerosi riconoscimenti e finanziamenti nazionali e internazionali tra cui Wellcome Trust, BBSRC, la Commissione Europea e NIH.

Autore di numerose pubblicazioni scientifiche di rilievo (oltre 10,000 citazioni, H index 57).

Recentemente parte di una task force scientifica per la gestione dell’emergenza Covid-19 in Veneto.

When: Feb 18th, 2021 – 4:00 pm

Where: Zoom meeting. Recording available on Mediaspace

Abstract: Mediation analysis is an important tool in the behavioral sciences for investigating the role of intermediate variables that lie in the path between a randomized treatment/exposure and an outcome variable. The influence of the intermediate variable on the outcome is often explored using structural equation models (SEMs), with model coefficients interpreted as possible effects. While there has been significant research on the topic in recent years, little work has been done on mediation analysis when the intermediate variable (mediator) is a high-dimensional vector. In this work we introduce a novel method for mediation analysis in this setting called the principal directions of mediation (PDMs). We demonstrate the method using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of thermal pain where we are interested in determining which brain locations mediate the relationship between the application of a thermal stimulus and self-reported pain.

Short bio: Martin Lindquist is a Professor of Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on mathematical and statistical problems relating to functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Dr. Lindquist is actively involved in developing new analysis methods to enhance our ability to understand brain function using human neuroimaging. He has published over 70 articles, and serves on the editorial boards of several scientific journals both in statistics and neuroimaging. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association.

In 2018 he was awarded the the Organization for Human Brain Mapping’s ‘Education in Neuroimaging Award’ for teaching statistical issues to the neuroimaging community and the development of online classes that have taught fMRI methods to more than 80,000 students world-wide.

When: Jan 28th, 2021 – 3:00 pm

Where: Zoom meeting. Recording available on Mediaspace

Abstract: It is said that complexity lies between order and disorder. In physiology, complexity issues are being considered with increased emphasis. Of crucial importance in the medical setting, pathological activity has been associated with low variability/complexity. In the case of the nervous system, it is well known that excessive synchronization is connected with pathologies such as epilepsy and Parkinson disease. However, brain rhythms and neural synchronization are also crucial for perception and cognition, so it is clear that either too much or not enough synchronization can lead to dysfunctional brain states.

Short bio: After receiving an undergraduate degree in biochemistry, Olaf Sporns earned a PhD in Neuroscience at Rockefeller University and conducted postdoctoral work at The Neurosciences Institute in New York and San Diego. Currently he is the Robert H. Shaffer Chair, a Distinguished Professor, and a Provost Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University in Bloomington. Sporns holds adjunct appointments in the School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, and in the School of Medicine. His main research area is theoretical and computational neuroscience, with a focus on complex brain networks. In addition to over 250 peer-reviewed publications he has written two books, “Networks of the Brain” and “Discovering the Human Connectome”. He is the Founding Editor of “Network Neuroscience”, a journal published by MIT Press. Sporns received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 2011, and the Patrick Suppes Prize in Psychology/Neuroscience, awarded by the American Philosophical Society, in 2017. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society of Experimental Psychologists and of the Society of Experimental Psychologists.

When: Nov 17th, 2020 – 3:00 pm

Where: Zoom meeting

Abstract: It is said that complexity lies between order and disorder. In physiology, complexity issues are being considered with increased emphasis. Of crucial importance in the medical setting, pathological activity has been associated with low variability/complexity. In the case of the nervous system, it is well known that excessive synchronization is connected with pathologies such as epilepsy and Parkinson disease. However, brain rhythms and neural synchronization are also crucial for perception and cognition, so it is clear that either too much or not enough synchronization can lead to dysfunctional brain states.

Short bio: Ramon Guevara is a physicist at the Department of Physics of the University of Padova. His main interest lies in the interface between biophysics and neuroscience. He has been a research fellow at several institutions, universities and hospitals around the world, including the University Paris Descartes, the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and the neuroimage center Neurospin, at Saclay, France. His research focuses on the coordination of neural activity, both in the normal and the pathological brain, and in particular on the search of principles underlying synchronization phenomena in the brain, and their physiological and cognitive implications.

When: December 3rd, 2020 – 3:00 – 5:00 PM CET ( 09:00 – 11:00 AM ET )

Where: Zoom Webinar

Webinar by NEUROMOVE-Rehab Lab, IAS Lab and MAL Lab

Please fill the form to subscribe and receive the link to connect a few days before the Webinar.

When: September 25th, 2020

Where: Aula Ippolito Nievo – Cortile Antico, Palazzo del Bo – Padova

The Padua Neuroscience Center is a unique multidisciplinary environment that integrates many different scientific backgrounds with the common effort to understand the brain mechanisms. In this scenario, sharing scientific ideas and technical expertise represents a crucial and fundamental step to establish collaborative networks and to draft powerful scientific plans.

The PNC Brain Day 2020 is the opportunity for the PIs:

1. To get to know each other in a series of short seminars and round tables;
2. To contribute to the identification of cross-platform research lines characterizing the PNC scientific plan;
3. To render PNC a unique and competitive research unit.

When: June 18th, 2020 – 3:00 pm

Where: Zoom meeting

Abstract: Over the past decade we have demonstrated that the fusion of subject-specific structural information of the human brain with mathematical dynamic models allows building biologically realistic brain network models, which have a predictive value, beyond the explanatory power of each approach independently. Here we illustrate the workflow along the example of epilepsy: we reconstruct personalized connectivity matrices of human epileptic patients using Diffusion Tensor weighted Imaging (DTI).

When: June 4th, 2020 – 3:00 pm

Where: Zoom meeting

Abstract: Mutations of connexin 32 (Cx32) protein cause the X-linked form of Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease (CMT1X), a demyelinating peripheral neuropathy for which there is no cure. A growing body of evidence indicates that ATP release through Cx32 hemichannels in Schwann cells could be critical for nerve myelination, but it is unknown if CMT1X mutations alter the physiological mechanism that controls Cx32 hemichannel opening and ATP release.

Our study uncovered a link between CMT1X and Cx32 hemichannel dysfunction, suggesting a candidate peptide for treating the disease caused by the R220X mutation of Cx32. The investigation was carried out by a combination of in vitro fluorescence optical microscopy combined with patch clamp and in silico numerical simulations.

When: May 28th, 2020 – 3:00 pm

Where: Zoom meeting

Abstract: Navigation plays a key role in organisms adaptive behavior. An adequate response to environmental stimuli, is fundamental for supporting food search, social interactions and mating, all of them step physiological mechanisms from the evolutionary point of view.

The lecture will talk about visuomotor responses and place learning studies in flies made in our and other laboratories combining sophisticated quantitative behavioral techniques, fly genetic tools and optogenetics.

When: May 21th, 2020 – 2:30 pm

Where: Zoom meeting

Abstract: Stroke is the most common cause of neurological disability in the world. In the UK alone, there are more people living with the consequences of stroke than with dementia (1.2M vs 0.85M) with an estimated annual cost of £26B. Stroke is still considered a single incident disease with most resources targeted to the first few hours, days or weeks after onset.

When: May 14th, 2020 – 3:00 pm

Where: Zoom meeting

Abstract: In everyday life contexts sometimes we manage to attend multiple sources of information without particular effort. Sometimes, however, performing two or more tasks together becomes very difficult, like for instance if we have to drive a car in a foggy day while paying attention to a debate on the radio. In these conditions our attention is loaded and we perform what is called “multitasking”.

When: May 7th, 2020 – 3:00 pm

Where: Zoom meeting

Abstract: New approaches to real-time assessment and closed-loop feedback based on behavioral features or brain activity will be discussed in the lecture that are designed to optimize stroke recovery interventions in mice for insight into better approaches for human recovery.