Information Technology seminars

MURPA Seminar - Integrating Neuroscience Knowledge: Brain Research in the Digital Age

Date and time:

24/07/2008, 9:30

Location:

Building: 26, Room: 135, (via HD interactive video) Clayton Campus

Presenters:

Mark Ellisman E-mail: mark@ncmir.ucsd.edu WWWW: http://www.ncmir.ucsd.edu/contact/personnel/mark_ellisman.shtm

Abstract:

A grand goal in neuroscience research is to understand how the interplay of structural, chemical and electrical signals in nervous tissue gives rise to behavior. We are rapidly approaching this horizon as neuroscientists make use of an increasingly powerful arsenal of instruments and tools for obtaining data, from the level of molecules to nervous systems, and engage in the arduous and challenging process of adapting and assembling neuroscience data at all scales of resolution and across disciplines into computerized databases. A consolidated strategy for integrating neuroscience data has been to provide a multi-scale structural or spatial scaffold on which existing and accruing elements of neuroscience knowledge can be located and relationships explored from any network-linked computer.  Similarly, efforts to integrate multi-scale data from different methods using a common spatial framework are hampered by incomplete descriptions of the microanatomy of nervous systems. While some spatial and temporal scales are well studied and described, there are many domains where current methods have provided only sparse descriptions. Multi-scale imaging activities currently providing data to populate this brain information scaffold will be highlighted, with particular reference to those emerging with capabilities to facilitate mapping at a resolution of one nm to 10's of µm - a dimensional range that encompasses macromolecular complexes, organelles, and multi-component structures such as synapses and cellular interactions in the context of the complex organization of  the brain. This effort also provides multi-scale structural frameworks for construction of models being used to test hypotheses not amenable to direct experimental analysis using software tools that allow for computational simulation of microphysiological properties of nervous systems.

Speaker biographies:

Dr. Mark H. Ellisman established NCMIR in 1988 to achieve greater understanding of the structure and function of the nervous system by developing 3D light and electron microscopy methods. Dr. Ellisman, also a founding fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, has received numerous awards including the Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigatory Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Creativity Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Since 1996, he has been serving as the founding director of the UCSD Center for Research in Biological Systems (CRBS).  After earning a Ph.D. in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, Dr. Ellisman began his tenure as a professor of neurosciences and bioengineering at UCSD in 1977. Since then, he has received several teaching awards, including the Department of Neurosciences Award for Outstanding Teaching in 1987 and 1992, and was named the University Lecturer in Biomedicine in 2001. He is also the interdisciplinary coordinator for the National Partnership for Advanced Computing Infrastructure (NPACI) and leads NPACI’s Neuroscience thrust, which involves integration of brain research and advanced computing and communications technologies. In 2001, he founded the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN), an NIH program that provides a multiscale imaging infrastructure linking major neuroimaging centers around the country. The following year, Dr. Ellisman was appointed to the National Advisory Council of the NIH National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) and to the Physics Division Review Committee of the Department of Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Ellisman’s research promotes the development and application of advanced imaging technologies to obtain new information about cell structure and function, structural correlates of nerve impulse conduction and axonal transport, cellular interactions during nervous system regeneration, cellular mechanisms regulating transient changes in cytoplasmic calcium, and aging in the central nervous system.

For more information, visit:

http://www.ncmir.ucsd.edu/contact/personnel/mark_ellisman.shtm

Enquiries:

Ronald Pose

Research group website:

http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/about/events/2008/murpa.html