Brain, Behavior & Cognition Seminar Series: Memory Engrams in Health and Disease with Assistant Professor Steve Ramirez

This week’s (Thursday 4/13 @ 12:30-1:30) Brain, Behavior & Cognition (BBC) Seminar guest speaker will be assistant professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Steve Ramirez!
The talk will be held in 610 Comm Ave, in the Eichenbaum Auditorium (RKC-101).

From Professor Ramirez:
My group studies the neurobiological mechanisms governing learning and memory. The broad programmatic themes tying my research together are twofold: (1) memories begin as moments in space that my lab captures with genetic tools for future modulation, and (2) they endure in the brain over large spans of time which my lab images longitudinally. To study where in the brain memories are located and to trace how they evolve over time, we genetically access memory-bearing brain cells, explore their causal contributions to altering circuits and behaviors, and image the heterogeneous cellular landscape of memory to understand how experience enduringly modifies the brain. My lab’s work collectively is converging on the general principle that sparse populations of cells distributed across the brain coordinate activity to store and retrieve engrams. Our research aims to provide a systems-level framework for molecularly cataloguing, physiologically characterizing, and genetically manipulating the cells that comprise engrams, and through control of the cellular basis of memory, our work is poised to provide new ways to reprogram the brain in healthy and diseased states.