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Somatosensory & Motor Research

ISSN: 0899-0220 (Print) 1369-1651 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ismr20

Barrels XXVIII take the Windy City by storm

Anjali Gour, Evan H. Lyall, Alexander Naka & Joshua C. Brumberg

To cite this article: Anjali Gour, Evan H. Lyall, Alexander Naka & Joshua C. Brumberg

(2016): Barrels XXVIII take the Windy City by storm, Somatosensory & Motor Research, DOI:

10.3109/08990220.2016.1173536

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/08990220.2016.1173536

Published online: 27 Apr 2016.

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Barrels XXVIII take the Windy City by storm

Anjali Gour

, Evan H. Lyall

, Alexander Naka

and Joshua C. Brumberg

d,e

Department of Connectomics, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt, Germany;

Biophysics Graduate Group, University of

California, Berkeley, USA;

The Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, USA;

PhD Program in Biology

(Neuroscience) and Psychology (Behavioral Cognitive Neuroscience), The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York, USA;

Department of Psychology,

Queens College, CUNY, New York, USA

ABSTRACT

The 28th annual Barrels meeting was held prior to the Society for Neuroscience meeting in October

2015 at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, Illinois. The meeting brought together

researchers focused on the rodent sensorimotor system. The meeting focused on modern techniques to

decipher cortical circuits, social interactions among rodents, and decision-making. The meeting allowed

investigators to share their work via short talks, poster presentations, and a data blitz.

ARTICLE HISTORY

Received 30 March 2016

Accepted 30 March 2016

Published online 25 April

2016

KEYWORDS

Vibrissa; whiskers; barrel

cortex; sensorimotor

Day 1: Thursday

The 28th annual Barrels meeting opened under the watchful

eye of Abraham Lincoln, in the Hogwarts-inspired Lincoln Hall

on the campus of Northwestern University School of Law in

Chicago, Illinois (Figure 1). The meeting was hosted on

Thursday 15 October and Friday 16 October 2015. The Barrels

meeting annually brings together investigators from around

the world focusing on issues related to the rodent whisker-to-

barrel cortex system. This year’s meeting focused on three

main topics: techniques and insights on deciphering cortical

circuits, the neural underpinnings of social behavior and com-

munication, and finally the neural basis of decision-making.

The first session on circuit breakers was introduced and

moderated by Jochen Staiger (Georg-August Universit

€

at).

The initial speaker, Troy Margrie (University College

London), focused on defining specific circuit elements and

then, based on knowledge of how they integrated into cor-

tical circuits, began to build up to a functional analysis.

Specifically, using four intrinsic parameters (which included

spike adaptation rates, levels of ‘‘sag’’ current, and action

potential threshold) cortico-cortical vs. cortico-thalamic neu-

rons could be differentiated within layer VI of primary visual

cortex in the mouse. Receptive field mapping showed that

cortico-thalamic neurons were much more tuned and that

cortico-cortical cells received much more depolarization in

response to visual stimuli. Using rabies virus in vivo it was

possible to infect individual cells and then determine some

of their pre-synaptic patterns. Following adequate incubation

time, sections were then cut on a vibratome and using

a 2-photon microscope it was possible to show that

cortico-cortical cells had more local inputs than cortico-

thalamic neurons which got a lot of their inputs (25%)

from higher-order visual areas, including the retrosplenial

cortex which encodes head direction. Putting the mouse on

a turntable that allowed rotation demonstrated that the rest-

ing membrane potential of cortico-thalamic neurons is

modulated by head direction in the horizontal axis.

The next speaker was Joanna Urban-Ciecko (Carnegie

Mellon University). Using whole-cell recordings she was able

to show that functional connectivity can be regulated by the

activity of somatostatin-positive GABAergic interneurons in

vitro. The spontaneous activity of the slice was modified using

different artificial cerebral spinal fluid compositions. It was

found that when the cortical network was active, pyramidal

to pyramidal cell connections displayed paired pulse facilita-

tion and when the network was relatively silent these same

connections showed paired pulse depression. Using optoge-

netics to activate a population of somatostatin-positive inter-

neurons, it was shown how these cells can rapidly stop

excitatory neurotransmission in the brain.

The final speaker of the session was Ian Wickersham

(Massachusetts Institute of Technology). His talk focused on

advances in monosynaptic racing largely using rabies viruses.

By modifying the virus correctly, it is possible to get mono-

synaptic labeling of the pre-synaptic targets without con-

founding the labeling of polysynaptic inputs which were

indistinguishable in earlier versions of the technique. A fur-

ther advance of the viral vectors is their relative lack of

toxicity to the host neurons. Through utilization of these tech-

niques investigators can determine the nature of the pre-

synaptic inputs to a specific neuron of interest.

Following a coffee break there where three short talks

moderated by Hillel Adesnik (University of California,

CONTACT J. C. Brumberg jbrumberg@gc.cuny.edu The Graduate Center, CUNY, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA

ß 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

SOMATOSENSORY & MOTOR RESEARCH, 2016

http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/08990220.2016.1173536

Downloaded by [City University of New York] at 08:57 28 April 2016

Berkeley). Leading off was Chia-Chien Chen (University of

California, Santa Cruz) who used a synthesis of behavioral

studies and in vivo 2-photon imaging to assay the role stress

has on learning and memory of motor tasks and the resultant

impact on dendritic spines. Using the pillar task, wherein

mice must use their whiskers to detect novel vs. familiar

objects, it was shown that stress decreases performance. The

2-photon imaging revealed that stress does not impact the

formation of new spines, but does increase the rate of elimin-

ation of spines, especially those found in clusters. Having the

mice housed in enriched environments ameliorates some of

the impacts of stress. Marcel Oberlaender (Institute for

Biological Cybernetics, T

€

ubingen, Germany) followed up by

using retrograde tracers to label distinct populations of layer

V cells. It was determined that 37% of layer V pyramidal cells

in barrel cortex project to the pons, 25% project to the spinal

trigeminal nucleus, 22% to the posterior medial nucleus of

the thalamus, and 15% to the superior colliculus. Cell

attached recording in vivo showed that posterior medial pro-

jecting neurons had high levels of spontaneous activity and

robust whisker-evoked responses. The neurons that projected

to the pons had lower spontaneous activity and responded

to the whisker stimulus throughout the deflection, including

the hold phase. Those neurons that project to the spinal

trigeminal nucleus have reliable early and sustained

responses. In conclusion, the data demonstrate that the long-

range target of a neuron’s axon is correlated with neurons’

receptive field properties and levels of spontaneous activity.

Finally, the morning session was concluded with a talk by

Xiang Yu (Chinese Academy of Sciences). She showed that

early enrichment leads to higher spine densities by 2 months

of age, but by 3 months they have overall lower spine den-

sities, but a higher proportion of spine morphologies that are

associated with mature animals. In general, it was found that

the proportion of mature spines was inversely correlated with

overall spine density. Using knockouts of various cytoskeletal

linking proteins, it was shown that beta-catenin plays a piv-

otal role in spine maturation.

Post lunch, the afternoon session addressed the topic of

social behavior and communication. The session was moder-

ated by Adi Mizrahi (Hebrew University, Israel). The first

speaker was Ann Clemens (Bernstein Center, Germany) who

discussed the neuronal responses to social facial touch.

Initially, data were presented showing how rodents and other

animals use their whiskers to socially interact. She and her

colleagues found that there are sex-related differences in this

interaction which evoked action potential (AP) firing in the

barrel cortex. They conducted in vivo recordings in head-fixed

‘‘subject’’ rats while they were interacting with a ‘‘stimulus’’

rat. The differences in the firing patterns were cell-type

dependent and seen in fast-spiking interneurons and not in

regular-spiking cells. They also studied the effect of estrus

phases on the spiking patterns during social touch in females.

Interestingly, during estrus the response to social touch was

lowest while the baseline firing was highest. Consistent with

these findings was immunocytochemical evidence that

showed that the estrogen receptor was colocalized in the bar-

rel cortex with the Ca

2þ

-binding protein parvalbumin, which

Figure 1. Meeting attendees. Under the watchful eye of Abraham Lincoln, the Barrels XXVIII attendees listen to the latest advancements in the rodent whisker-to-bar-

rel system.

2 A. GOUR ET AL.

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is expressed by fast-spiking interneurons. Their current work

explores the molecular mechanisms underlying this cyclical

pattern and Dr Clemens also discussed some preliminary data

and approaches in this regard.

The next speaker was Gul Dolen (Johns Hopkins

University). Her work was based on the mechanistic under-

standing of the pathogenesis of social dysfunctionality in

neuropsychiatric disorders (particularly autism) and its under-

lying neural encoding. Using genetic modulation for blocking

the oxytocin (OT) receptors in the nucleus accumbens (NAc)

in mice, her group established that only the inputs from dor-

sal raphe nucleus are vital for social interactions. This was

tested using the social conditioned place preference para-

digm wherein the OT-receptor blocking was confirmed elec-

trophysiologically. Subsequently, in Venus reporter mice, they

observed the localization of NAc OT on inputs from dorsal

raphe nucleus. Thus, she suggested the following mechanism:

OT when released in NAc subsequently acts on the terminals

of axons that originate from the dorsal raphe nucleus thereby

inducing a release of serotonin. This in turn led to glutamate

release which eventually resulted in long-term depression

(LTD). It is known that LTD is correlated to social interaction

as animals living socially exhibit stronger LTD than their iso-

lated counterparts. Together, these data suggest the social

reward mechanism to be the result of coordinated OT and

serotonin activity in the NAc of mice.

The following speaker was Bianca Jones Marlin (New

York University) who discussed how OT regulates the mater-

nal behavior of pup retrieval via enhancing the auditory cor-

tical responses in mouse mothers. She began by illustrating

the pup retrieval behavior which was seen in the case of

experienced mothers in response to distress calls from new-

born pups when they were separated. Virgin females did not

exhibit this behavior. However, only the virgin females

co-housed with dams or those subjected to central adminis-

tration of OT displayed the retrieval behavior. She and her

colleagues then looked into the expression patterns of the OT

receptor via antibody (OXTR-2) labelling. Interestingly, they

observed the expression to be significantly higher in the left

auditory cortex and to be true for both the groups, dams and

virgins, thereby implying OT-receptor expression to be inde-

pendent of experience. They hypothesized that a distinct spe-

cific neural circuit, augmented with OT receptors, would thus

be adapted for pup distress calls. Using electrophysiology,

they subsequently looked into neuromodulatory effects of OT.

It was seen that the immediate effect of OT pairing (either

topical OT application or optogenetic OT activation) in virgin

females decreased inhibitory post-synaptic currents (IPSCs)

and increased reliability of potentiated excitatory post-synap-

tic currents (EPSCs). However, 45 min post pairing there was

significant strengthening of IPSCs. This delayed balancing was

crucial for spike time precision in OT paired virgins (also in

experienced dams) which sensitized them for pup retrieval. In

conclusion, she suggested that the maternal pup retrieval

was a result of OT-mediated delayed balancing of inhibition

with excitation of auditory cortex.

The day’s talks ended with Adi Mizrahi’s (Hebrew

University, Israel) talk on plasticity in the primary auditory cor-

tex (A1) with a focus on coding of natural sounds. Having

emphasized the role of pure tones in understanding the gen-

eral mechanisms of auditory cortex, he suggested its plausible

role in understanding natural sounds. With a view to gain

insights into this, he discussed the spectrotemporal receptive

field (STRF) which is a two-dimensional function used to ana-

lyze the tuning properties of individual auditory responsive

neurons. Knowing from previous work that STRF-based mod-

els account for a small fraction of cortical responses to natural

sounds, he discussed the two main underlying reasons: (i)

non-linearity of neuronal responses in auditory cortex; and (ii)

context sensitivity of neuronal responses (i.e., same stimulus

when presented in varied context exhibit different responses).

To account for context sensitivity, he suggested the role of

inhibitory mechanisms in the auditory cortex and synaptic

depression (which was seen in both thalamocortical and cor-

tico-cortical synapses) amongst other additional mechanisms.

Moving from single neuronal coding to population coding,

Professor Mizrahi focused on tonotopic maps in A1 across

species. While the presence of such tonotopic maps in mouse

A1 was debated by different groups of studies, Professor

Mizrahi suggested the presence of coarse grain level tono-

topy in mouse A1. He also stated that the tonotopy at lower

levels of the auditory reception pathway is majorly a conse-

quence of decomposition of frequencies. Surprisingly, A1 was

different and did not seem to have frequency-decomposition-

based tonotopy. It was then suggested that novel organiza-

tion patterns rather than smooth tonotopic maps may be

employed by A1 for processing of complex sounds. In conclu-

sion, Professor Mizrahi proposed that the processing in audi-

tory cortex might be based on general mechanisms which

are indifferent for all sounds (simple and complex; natural

and artificial). Following the talks, a dinner and poster presen-

tation was hosted that allowed conference attendees to see

the latest results while feasting.

Day 2: Friday

The second day began early with four short talks moderated

by Marcel Oberlaender (Institute for Biological Cybernetics,

€

ubingen, Germany). Mitra Hartmann (Northwestern

University) led off a lab tag team by presenting every mem-

ber of the audience with a 3D-printed, scaled model of a

mouse’s whisker as a means to visualize all of the forces pre-

sent during each whisk cycle and every contact event. Her

student Lucie Huet followed up by showing that the best

way to approximate the bending moment at the whisker

base is to compute the curvature at the base, and that meas-

uring global or average curvature did not perform nearly as

well. Finally, Anne Yang presented data showing that the

force propagated at the base of the whisker is dependent

upon the intrinsic curvature of the whisker itself, and there-

fore identical deflections presented by piezos will not result

in two whiskers transmitting the same mechanical informa-

tion. Andrew Hires (University of Southern California) spoke

next and demonstrated that a conical model of a whisker per-

forms very poorly at replicating whisker kinetics during touch.

He showed that one can account for a much larger percent-

age of the variance of a whisker’s kinetics by allowing the

SOMATOSENSORY & MOTOR RESEARCH 3

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bending stiffness to vary along the length of the whisker. He

hypothesized that this could be the result of an inhomogen-

eity in Young’s modulus along the length of the whisker,

which is proportional to the fourth power of the radius of the

whisker. When he measured each whisker’s radius he actually

found that a whisker’s radius does not linearly decrease along

its length, rather the whisker is thinner in the middle than a

linear relationship would suggest, lending some credence to

his hypothesis. Afterward, Jason Ritt (Boston University)

described a study investigating how rodents choose to pal-

pate objects in their environment and how much primary

somatosensory cortex (S1) contributes to this behavior. By

having the mice perform a simple tactile search behavior, he

found that mice employ a strategy that modulates whisking

to counteract head motion and sustain repeated contacts, but

only when doing so is likely to be useful to the mouse.

Secondly, he replicated previous results showing that optoge-

netically stimulating S1 in quiescent animals produces retrac-

tions, but further showed that whisk-locked stimulation

regularizes whisking and increases whisk frequency.

Additionally, he demonstrated that the phase of this whisk-

locked stimulation is extremely important in how it affects

the mouse’s whisking, with even a 20-ms difference in stimu-

lation time producing very different behaviors. Rasmus

Petersen (University of Manchester, UK) concluded the morn-

ing session by describing a generalized linear model (GLM)

based approach for predicting the spiking activity of trigemi-

nal ganglion neurons during natural whisking, using whisker

angle and curvature measured via high-speed photography.

He found that the vast majority of units were fitted better by

a curvature-based model, and furthermore incorporating

angle information did not improve the fit. By fitting a GLM

based on the whisker’s acceleration during free whisking, he

also showed that 50% of units were sensitive to acceleration,

with a heterogeneous mix of these units being tuned for a

specific direction of the acceleration.

After a group discussion and break for coffee, there were

five more short talks moderated by Solange Brown (Johns

Hopkins University). Tess Oram (Weizmann Institute of

Science, Israel) spoke first and described her strategy to iden-

tify the perceptual functions of the ventral posterior medial

(VPM) and posterior medial (POm) thalamic nuclei. She identi-

fied thalamic units in each of these pathways by injecting

either Cre-on or Cre-off channelrhodopsin into GPR26-Cre

mice that were allowed to freely move in a cage. She found

that the firing rates of neurons in both pathways were modu-

lated by head acceleration and orientation, but that they

were especially modulated by head velocity. Additionally, she

showed that VPM neurons were strongly modulated by vibris-

sal touch and that this modulation did not significantly inter-

act with head-motion-induced modulations. Clarissa

Whitmire (Georgia Institute of Technology) followed up by

showing that neurons in the leminsical thalamus (VPM), which

typically burst fire synchronously in response to touch,

decrease their burstiness and synchrony as a result of adapta-

tion. She demonstrated this by using piezos to deflect

whiskers of an anesthetized mouse while modulating the

amount of underlying noise being played through the piezos.

Afterward Scott Pluta (University of California, Berkeley)

moved up to the primary somatosensory cortex where he

presented results showing a new inhibitory pathway in cor-

tical microcircuit. While selectively silencing layer 4 (L4)

excitatory neurons with halorhodopsin, he showed that

regular-spiking neurons in layer 5 (L5) increased their firing

rates. Conversely, when he activated channelrhodopsin in L4

excitatory neurons, L5 regular-spiking neurons decreased their

firing rates. He found that this is likely due to a previously

undiscovered direct connection from L4 excitatory neurons

onto L5 fast-spiking interneurons. This translaminar circuit

helps to sharpen the spatial tuning of L5 pyramidal neurons.

Next Vishalini Sivarajan (Aachen University Hospital,

Germany) described work where she patched and labeled

non-fast-spiking inhibitory neurons in L4. She clustered her

neurons based on where they project and found three dis-

tinct clusters: infragranular projecting, supragranular projec-

ting, and intralaminar projecting neurons. One major surprise

was that some of the intralaminar projecting neurons also

projected laterally to surrounding columns. Secondly, she

clustered the neurons based on electrophysiological proper-

ties and again found three distinct groups: high adapting, low

threshold spiking, and late spiking. However, there is no cor-

relation between the clusters identified with the two meth-

ods. Finally, to finish off the morning sessions Guanxiao Qi

(Aachen University, Germany) advanced our understanding of

L4 connectivity even further by measuring the connection

probability between excitatory neurons and other neurons in

L4. Paired whole-cell recordings revealed that the connection

probability of an excitatory neuron being connected to

another excitatory neuron within the same barrel is 30%,

while the probability of an excitatory neuron connecting to

an excitatory neuron in a neighboring barrel is 10%. This is

contrasted with his finding that there is a 60% connection

probability of an excitatory neuron connecting onto an inhibi-

tory neuron within the same barrel, as opposed to a 20%

connection probability onto inhibitory neurons in neighboring

barrels. The degree of transbarrel connectivity was quite sur-

prising and is sure to play a pivotal role in shaping L4 neu-

rons’ receptive field properties.

The final session of the meeting focused on decision-mak-

ing. Moderator Eddie Zagha (Yale University) introduced the

topic with a summary of three key challenges facing neuro-

scientists studying decision-making: (1) designing choice-

based behavioral tasks; (2) recording neural activity during

these tasks; and (3) identifying a framework to ‘‘read-out’’ and

model the neural computations that underlie effective deci-

sion-making in animals.

The first speaker, Mathew Diamond (Scuola Internazionale

Superiore di Studi Avanzati, Italy) described work using a

vibrotactile delayed comparison task to study temporal inte-

gration in both rats and humans. In this task, subjects were

presented with two successive vibrating stimuli to the

whiskers or fingertips. Stimuli were irregular and noisy, as

each time point in a stimulus was generated by randomly

sampling a velocity value from a normal distribution. On each

trial, subjects had to discriminate which stimulus had been

generated from a higher variance distribution. Diamond and

colleagues also varied the duration of stimuli, and found that

this could confound judgment of variance; for both rats and

4 A. GOUR ET AL.

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humans, longer stimuli were perceived to be of higher vari-

ance (‘‘longer feels stronger’’). This suggests that the brain

may be summating velocities over time to perform this task.

Supporting this interpretation, psychophysical performance

was well-described by a model in which tactile inputs were

temporally summated with a primacy bias. Finally, extracellu-

lar recordings in rats revealed potential neural correlates of

these perceptual processes. Some neurons in primary somato-

sensory cortex appeared to be performing a computation

very similar to the predicted summation, while neurons in

premotor cortex displayed choice-related activity that was

biased by stimulus duration in a manner similar to the behav-

ior itself.

The next speaker, Daniel O’Connor (Johns Hopkins

University), described a technically impressive study examin-

ing the evolution of choice-related activity across multiple

stages of the whisker somatosensory pathway. In this study,

mice performed a detection task, licking for a reward in

response to a whisker stimulus. Calcium imaging and whole-

cell recordings in the barrel cortex revealed that many neu-

rons displayed activity encoding the mouse’s choice on a

trial-by-trial basis, in addition to encoding the stimulus itself.

This choice-related activity was evident in the spiking of only

a subset of these neurons, though choice-related subthres-

hold activity was evident in the membrane potential of nearly

all whole-cell recordings. Extracellular recordings revealed

that this choice-related activity was totally absent in primary

mechanoreceptor neurons of the trigeminal ganglion,

but that transient and weak choice-related activity could

be seen in the spiking of neurons in the ventral posterome-

dial nucleus of the thalamus. However, this brief increase

in thalamic activity could not account for the robust and

prolonged choice-related activity seen in the cortex, since

mimicking this transient activity via optogenetic

stimulation of thalamus only briefly increased cortical activity.

Calcium imaging of the boutons of axonal projections from

secondary somatosensory cortex to barrel cortex revealed

that these appear to convey choice-related activity, which

likely contributes to the choice-related activity seen in barrel

cortex.

Following this, Cornelius Schwarz (Universit

€

at T

€

ubingen,

Germany) gave a talk on active sensation in the whisker sys-

tem. He opened the talk by postulating that the haptic scan-

ning performed by whiskers or hands bears many similarities

to active sensing modalities such as echo-location or electro-

sensation, since it involves the active transfer of energy to

the environment. This type of sensing can be optimized

through strategies that control how scanning energy is trans-

formed into forces affecting the sensory organ. To study

which parameters of these forces are used by the brain, a var-

iety of tactile stimuli trains were presented to the whiskers of

rats. These stimuli were designed to mimic the slip–stick

whisker movements that occur during natural whisking.

Notably, rats could use instantaneous kinetic parameters (i.e.,

the waveform) of these stimuli in a discrimination task, in

addition to the frequency and intensity of the stimuli.

Schwarz closed the talk with a look at how brainstem anat-

omy might contribute to a closed-loop system for controlling

whisker-based active sensing.

The final speaker of the meeting was Jianing Yu (Janelia

Research Campus), who described his work on the role of

inhibition in filtering inputs from the whiskers during active

sensation. A fundamental problem for any actively sensing

system is to distinguish signals caused by self-motion (reaffer-

ence) from signals originating from the external world (exaf-

ference). Using whole-cell recordings from neurons in layer 4

of the barrel cortex of awake mice, Jianing and colleagues

observed that while (putatively excitatory) regular-spiking

neurons were not strongly driven by the reafference gener-

ated by the act of whisking, and instead responded select-

ively to exafferent signals generated when a whisker contacts

an object. In contrast, fast-spiking inhibitory interneurons fired

in response to both whisking and touch. This led to the

hypothesis that feedforward inhibition from fast-spiking neu-

rons might counteract slow excitatory inputs created by

whisking, allowing regular-spiking cells to respond only to

touch. Supporting this notion, optogenetic suppression of

fast-spiking cells unmasked whisking responses in layer 4

excitatory neurons, and this whisking-related activity reduced

the signal-to-noise ratio of touch responses.

This brought down the curtain on the 28th annual Barrels

meeting with a resolve to meet again in fall 2016 prior to the

Society for Neuroscience meeting on the campus of the

University of Southern California.

Acknowledgements

A special thanks to the organizing committee of Joshua Brumberg (Chair),

Randy Bruno, Mitra Hartmann, David Kleinfeld, Robert Sachdev, Gordon

Shepherd, Jr., Jochen Staiger, and Mary Ann Wilson. Thanks to Kathy

Diekmann for creating the abstract booklet.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

SOMATOSENSORY & MOTOR RESEARCH 5

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Appendix: Schedule

Barrels XXVIII

15–16 October 2015, Northwestern University Law School, Chicago, IL

Thursday, 15 October

8:45–9:00 Continental Breakfast, Name Tag Pickup

9:00–9:05 Welcome

Joshua C. Brumberg, The Graduate Center and Queens College,

CUNY

Gordon Shepherd, Jr., Northwestern University

9:05–12:00 Circuit Breakers

9:05–9:15 Introduction/Overview: Jochen Staiger, Georg-August Universit

€

9:15–9:45 Bobby Kasthuri, Boston University

Towards a saturated anatomical description of the brain

9:45–10:15 Troy Margrie, University College London, UK

Cellular dissections of function and connectivity of neuronal

circuits

10:15–10:45 Joanna Urban-Ciecko, Carnegie Mellon University

Functional connectivity is regulated by SOM interneurons

spontaneous activity

10:45–11:15 Ian Wickersham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advances in monosynaptic tracing

11:15–11:30 Coffee Break

11:30–12:00 Discussion

12:00–1:00 Short Platform Talks 1

Moderator: Hillel Adesnik, University of California, Berkeley

12:00–12:15 Chia-Chien Chen, Ju Lu, and Yi Zuo

University of California, Santa Cruz

Stress-induced abnormality of dendritic spine dynamics in the

mouse barrel cortex

12:15–12:30 Gerardo Rojas-Piloni, Jason M. Guest, Robert Egger, Andrew S. Johnson,

and Marcel Oberlaender

Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, Jupiter, FL and

Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, T

€

ubingen,

Germany

Deconstruction of sensory stimuli in L5 of rat barrel cortex via

parallel long-range pathways to disjoint subcortical targets

12:30–12:45 Wen-Jie Bian, Wan-Ying Miao, Shu-Ji He, Zilong Qiu, and Xiang Yu

Institute of Neuroscience, State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience,

CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science, Shanghai Institutes

for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai,

China

Coordinated spine pruning and maturation mediated by

inter-spine competition for cadherin/catenin complexes

12:45–1:00 Discussion

1:00–2:30 Lunch Break

2:30–5:10 Social Behavior and Communication

2:30–2:40 Moderator: Robert Froemke, New York University

2:40–3:10 Ann Clemens, Bernstein Center, Germany

Social facial touch and fast-spiking interneurons of the female

barrel cortex

3:10–3:40 Gul Dolen, Johns Hopkins University

Social reward: Basic mechanisms and autism pathogenesis

3:40–4:10 Peggy Mason, University of Chicago

Determinants of socially selective helping in rats

4:10–4:40 Adi Mizrahi, Hebrew University, Israel

Targeting natural plasticity in auditory cortex

4:40–4:50 Coffee Break

4:50–5:10 Discussion

5:10–5:30 Data Blitz

Moderator: Joshua C. Brumberg, The Graduate Center and Queens

College, CUNY

5:30–8:00 Poster Session

6:30 Dinner

Friday, 16 October

8:45–9:00 Continental Breakfast

9:00–11:00 Short Platform Talks 2

Moderator: Marcel Oberlaender, Max Planck Institute for Biological

Cybernetics

9:00–9:15 Lucie A. Huet

, Anne E. T. Yang

, Sara A. Solla

2, 3

, Todd D. Murphey

John Rudnicki

, and Mitra J. Z. Hartmann

1, 4

Department of Mechanical Engineering,

Department of Physics

and Astronomy,

Department of Physiology, and

Department of

Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL

Kinematic and kinetic signals in the vibrissal trigeminal system

9:15–9:45 Samuel Andrew Hires

, Jonathan Sy

, Vincent Huang

, Isis Wyche

, Xiyue

Wang

, Adam Schuyler

, and David Golomb

Department of Biological Sciences, Neurobiology Section,

University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA and

Department of Physiology and Cell Biology, Faculty of Health

Sciences, Ben-Gurion University, Be’er-Sheva, Israel

Beyond cones: An improved model of whisker bending

9:45–10:00 J. B. Schroeder, V. J. Mariano, G. I. Telian, and J. T. Ritt

Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University

Closedloop optogenetic stimulation reveals primary somatosen-

sory cortex participation in whisk timing

10:00–10:15 D. Campagner

, M. Evans

, M. Bale

, A. Erskine

, and R. S. Petersen

University of Manchester,

Univesity of Sussex, and

University

College London

Prediction of trigeminal ganglion activity during object explor-

ation in awake mice

10:15–10:30 Discussion

10:30–11:00 Coffee Break

11:00–12:30 Short Platform Talks 3

Moderator: Solange Brown, Johns Hopkins University

11:00–11:15 Tess Oram, Ehud Ahissar, and Ofer Yizhar

Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

Head-motion modulation of the activity of optogenetically

tagged neurons in the vibrissal thalamus

11:15–11:30 Clarissa J. Whitmire

, Christian Waiblinger

1, 2, 3

, Cornelius Schwarz

2, 3

and Garrett B. Stanley

Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering,

Georgia Tech and Emory, Atlanta, GA,

Systems

Neurophysiology, Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative

Neuroscience, and

Department of Cognitive Neurology, Hertie

Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of T

€

ubingen,

Germany

Information coding through adaptive control of synchronized

thalamic bursting

11:30–11:45 Scott Pluta*, Alexander Naka*, Julia Veit, Gregory Telian, Lucille Yao,

Richard Hakim, David Taylor, and Hillel Adesnik

University of California, Berkeley

A direct translaminar inhibitory circuit tunes cortical output

11:45–12:00 Guanxiao Qi

and Dirk Feldmeyer

1, 2, 3

Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Research Centre J

€

ulich,

€

ulich, Germany,

Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and

Psychosomatics, Aachen University, Aachen, Germany, and

€

ulich-Aachen Research Alliance-Brain, Aachen, Germany

Inter-barrel synaptic connections involving layer 4 spiny neurons

and interneurons in rat barrel cortex

12:00–12:15 Vishalini Sivarajan

, Guanxiao Qi

, and Dirk Feldmeyer

1,2

Depaertment of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics,

Aachen University Hospital, Aachen, Germany and

Forschungszentrum, Juelich, Germany

Morphological and functional characterization of non-fast-spiking

GABAergic interneurons in layer 4 microcircuitry of rat barrel

cortex

12:15–12:30 Discussion

12:30–2:00 Lunch Break

2:00–4:30 Decision-Making

2:00–2:10 Introduction/Overview: Edward Zagha, Yale University

2:10–2:40 Mathew Diamond, SISSA, Trieste, Italy

Temporal integration in a vibrotactile delayed comparison task:

From sensory coding to decision in humans and rats

2:40–3:10 Daniel O’Connor, Johns Hopkins University

Circuit analysis of choice-related activity in mouse somatosensory

cortex

3:10–3:40 Cornelius Schwarz, Universit

€

at T

€

ubingen, Germany

What is encoded by active whisker scanning and how is it

modified by scanning parameters?

3:40–4:10 Jianing Yu, Janelia Research Campus

Thalamocortical feedforward inhibition gates tactile input during

active somatosensation

4:10–4:30 Discussion

4:30 Adjourn

6 A. GOUR ET AL.

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