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Michael Hasselmo combines experiments and computational modeling to study how memory works in the brain. Photo (left) by Michael Spencer Photography.<\/em><\/p>\n Michael Hasselmo<\/a>, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of psychological and brain sciences, who is known for his pioneering research into memory as well as for his leadership in bringing together neuroscientists from multiple disciplines, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a great honor to be part of this community,\u201d says Hasselmo, director of\u00a0BU\u2019s Center for Systems Neuroscience<\/a> (CSN). \u201cIt\u2019s a society that brings together all different disciplines. You tend to deal mostly with people in your field, and it\u2019s good to be reminded of the broader scope of the world, not just academic, but also in the arts, and even in politics.\u201d<\/p>\n Also, says Hasselmo, \u201cI would love to meet Barack Obama.\u201d The former American president has also been named to the the academy\u2019s Class of 2018.<\/p>\n In addition to Obama, among the academy\u2019s 213 new members, who were elected in 25 categories and are affiliated with 125 institutions, are author Ta-Nehisi Coates, Netflix, Inc., CEO W. Reed Hastings, Jr., actor Tom Hanks, and Supreme Court Justice Sonia M. Sotomayor. The new members will be formally inducted at a ceremony at the academy in October.<\/p>\n \u201cMembership in the American Academy is wonderful recognition of Michael\u2019s outstanding accomplishments as a scientist and academic leader,\u201d says Robert A. Brown<\/a>, BU president, himself a member of the academy.<\/p>\n \u201cMike is an exceptional neuroscientist who is known for using a range of experimental methods, including neurophysiological and behavioral experiments and computational modeling, to understand the cortical mechanism for memory-guided behavior,\u201d says Gloria Waters<\/a>, vice president and associate provost for research.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to perform an experiment and describe the results,\u201d says John White<\/a>, a College of Engineering professor of biomedical engineering. \u201cMike goes further, building a computational framework to describe a wide variety of results and predict outcomes of new experiments. He is far ahead of the field in this regard.\u201d<\/p>\n Hasselmo has used these methods to describe how the dynamics of brain circuits and certain chemicals in the brain\u2014such as acetylcholine\u2014enhance the encoding of memory and guide behavior. He focuses on the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus, and his work is relevant to how memory and cognitive function are impaired in Alzheimer\u2019s disease and schizophrenia. He has published papers modeling cognitive deficits in both disorders based on neural circuit models.<\/p>\n \u201cHis work on the neuromodulatory and oscillatory dynamics of memory is groundbreaking,\u201d says academy member Earl Miller, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, who has collaborated with Hasselmo.<\/p>\n Hasselmo learned about the honor last Tuesday, when Kevin Gonzales, Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering (CILSE) director of operations, told him he had a FedEx delivery downstairs. \u201cI thought it was just supplies,\u201d Hasselmo says.<\/p>\n As soon as he read the letter inside, he emailed his wife, Chantal Stern<\/a>, a CAS professor of psychological and brain sciences and director of the Cognitive Neuorimaging\u00a0Center<\/a>. Stern texted their two grown children with the news, and Hasselmo sent a text to his 86-year-old father, Nils Hasselmo, the former president of the University of Minnesota and of the Association of American Universities<\/a>.<\/p>\n Hasselmo is the principal investigator on two National Institutes of Health<\/a>\u00a0R01 grants to study memory mechanisms involving modulation and oscillatory dynamics in entorhinal cortex and other cortical structures in the brain.<\/p>\n He is also the principal investigator on a five-year, $7.5 million Office of Naval Research<\/a> (ONR) grant to study how the brain mechanisms for learning of rules work and how this might be translated into computer programs, especially for autonomous systems. The grant was awarded as part of the ONR\u2019s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative program, which supports team research involving more than one traditional scientific discipline.<\/p>\n Team research involving multiple disciplines is a trademark of Hasselmo\u2019s work in the lab as well as his teaching. He founded the CSN, and in 2014, he started its popular lunchtime seminars, which feature speakers from other BU departments, such as biomedical engineering, math, physics, pharmacology and experimental therapeutics, and neurology, as well as from other institutions across the country and around the world. The seminars, usually held from\u00a010\u00a0to 20 times a year<\/a>, are open to all and routinely draw 80 to 100 people. So important have they become to BU\u2019s neuroscience community that the architects of CILSE designed <\/a>the first floor colloquium room<\/a> to accommodate them.<\/p>\n Hasselmo, who plays keyboards in a rock band with Miller and other scientists, is known as a generous mentor and has helped guide 17 of his former graduate students\u2014and postdoctoral fellows\u2014to positions as faculty researchers at universities across the United States and in Canada. \u201cI would not be where I am today without Mike\u2019s mentorship,\u201d Lisa Giocomo<\/a> (CAS\u201904, GRS\u201908), a Stanford University assistant professor of neurobiology, wrote in an email. \u201cHe taught me to work successfully across a wide range of disciplines. His enthusiasm for science was an inspiration.\u201d<\/p>\n On a shelf behind Hasselmo\u2019s desk is a drawing of a mouse by Giocomo. In her email, she recalled the day she made her first neural recording of a mouse, in Hasselmo\u2019s lab. \u201cIt was probably just one recording among the thousands Mike had performed\u2014or seen\u2014but he came in with such excitement to watch the recording on my rig, as if it was the very first.\u201d<\/p>\n Hasselmo, who grew up in Golden Valley, Minn., graduated from Harvard College with a special concentration in behavioral neuroscience. He started out as a linguistics major looking for a way to combine his multiple interests\u2014in language and the brain, physics, and philosophy. \u201cI remember reasoning this through as an undergraduate,\u201d he says. \u201cI wanted to be able to understand everything about the world in a reductionist, mathematically structured way. I was also interested in philosophical questions about how we think and\u00a0the basis for our consciousness of the world.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I thought, how can I link those questions?\u201d The answer, he decided, was neuroscience. As a linguistics major, \u201cI wanted to understand how neurons in the brain could perform language function. Then I realized there wasn\u2019t any knowledge about that, really, and there still isn\u2019t, because that was difficult to study in real neural circuits. So I thought, I can study memory\u2014that\u2019s a cognitive function. You can study it in neural circuits. It\u2019s not only present in humans.\u201d<\/p>\n Hasselmo studied at Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship, earning a PhD in experimental psychology in 1988, and meeting Stern, who was also at Oxford. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology in 1991 and was an Harvard assistant and associate professor of psychology from 1991 to 1998.<\/p>\n