Colloquia/Seminars
Time: 11:00am, June 5, 2024
Venue: Lecture Hall, Shanghai Brain Center
Speaker: Prof. Alan Jasanoff
Biological Engineering, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Nuclear Science and Engineering;
Director, Center for Neurobiological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Biography:
Prof. Jasanoff is a neuroscientist and bioengineer whose research focuses on studying integrated functions of the nervous system using innovative imaging technology. His lab is known for developing molecular neuroimaging tools that permit functional mapping of physiological activity in deep tissue with molecular and cellular precision, and for applying these tools in studies of neurochemical dynamics and other aspects of neural function. Jasanoff’s research spans aspects of molecular biology, chemistry, engineering, medical physics, and neural systems research, and his work on imaging probes for next-generation functional MRI has been recognized by innovation awards from the NIH and other sources. He has mentored over forty current and former graduate students and postdocs from five departments at MIT, many of whom now have their own successful research laboratories. Jasanoff is founding Director of the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering and he has also led an NIH-funded training program for neuroengineering graduate students. He is the author of The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are, a 2018 book that combats popular myths in neuroscience and discusses implications in psychology, medicine, and technology.
Abstract:
Understanding the neural bases of behavior and cognition requires determining how mechanistically distinct processing elements combine to carry out brain function. In this talk, I will introduce some of our laboratory’s efforts to address this goal using a combination of molecular sensors with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). I will discuss how magnetically active molecules can provide readouts of neural activity on behaviorally relevant time scales, focusing particularly on new protein-based “hemogenetic” MRI probes that operate by hijacking hemodynamic mechanisms. I will explain how one such probe, called NOSTIC, enables circuit-specific functional imaging experiments in rodents and nonhuman primates. Using this approach, we can investigate how multiregional patterns of information flow give rise to functional specificity in sensory and affective brain systems. A related approach, called BLUsH, permits imaging of luminescent reporter genes by MRI. We use BLUsH to reveal dissociations between physical and functional connectivity in individual animals over time. We also apply BLUsH to perform longitudinal brain-wide imaging of neuroplasticity gene induction, uncovering reciprocal relationships between neural activity and plasticity in a mouse model of substance abuse. These results indicate the potential for hemogenetic tools and molecular MRI more broadly to provide insights into some of the most important problems in neuroscience.