Kishore Kuchibhotla

Wednesday 13th December 2017

Time: 4.00pm

Ground Floor Seminar Room

25 Howland Street, London, W1T 4JG

Neural circuits for learning and context: dissociating knowledge from performance

Performance on cognitive tasks is often used to measure intelligence, yet remains controversial since such testing is susceptible to contextual factors. Here, we report using behavior and modeling that acquisition of task knowledge can be dissociated from expression during learning in mice by manipulating the testing context. Strikingly, the acquisition of this latent knowledge was rapid and highly stereotyped across subjects while execution in the testing context was slower and far more variable. Inter-individual performance variability thus emerges more from testing context than underlying sensorimotor abilities. I will present preliminary data that links our behavioral and modeling framework with potential neural mechanisms, using chronic two-photon calcium imaging in head-fixed behaving mice to observe excitatory, inhibitory and cholinergic dynamics during learning.

Biopgraphy:
Kishore recently opened up his laboratory as an Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Neuroscience, at Johns Hopkins University. His lab is actively recruiting so visit his website for more information (circuits.jhu.edu). He received his undergraduate degrees at MIT in Physics and Brain/Cognitive Science with a minor in Political Science. He went on to earn his PhD in Biophysics at Harvard University under the mentorship of Drs. Brian Bacskai and Bradley Hyman. Kishore completed his postdoctoral work at the Skirball Institute at NYU with Dr. Robert Froemke. While his lab is being renovated, he is doing a short sabbatical at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris in the Group for Neural Theory with Srdjan Ostojic.