Upcoming Events
Psilocybin is a serotonergic psychedelic with growing interest as a psychiatric therapeutic, yet how it reshapes brain activity and perception at the circuit level remains poorly understood. I will present two complementary studies from head-fixed mouse models that combine large-scale electrophysiology with behavior to address this question. The first study characterizes how a single dose of psilocybin alters firing rates, local field potentials, EEG oscillations, and burst dynamics across cortical (prefrontal, sensory), hippocampal, and thalamic regions, comparing psilocybin to saline controls and to a ketanserin pre-treatment group that isolates effects dependent on the 5-HT2A receptor. The second study found that psilocybin collapsed performance in a visual change-detection task to chance level while leaving motor kinematics unperturbed, yet, surprisingly, without impairing visual coding itself. Instead, psilocybin biased visual cortex toward sensory surprise by aberrantly recruiting change-encoding neurons even when no change occurred, an effect linked to a prominent 4-Hz oscillation strongest in somatostatin-expressing (SST) interneurons. Together, these studies link psilocybin's receptor pharmacology to circuit-level dynamics and their behavioral/perceptual consequences.
The basal ganglia are often thought to select discrete actions. This talk presents evidence for a broader role: the basal ganglia help control continuous changes in the body and coordinate the sequence of smaller action elements that make up complex behavior. Recordings from mice show that different parts of the basal ganglia represent variables such as movement velocity, body position, and head orientation. These signals may serve as instructions for brainstem systems that maintain posture and guide movement. In this view, the basal ganglia operate within layered feedback loops, continually adjusting the body’s configuration as behavior unfolds. Experiments also show that separate basal ganglia circuits control different components of an action, including aiming, reaching, and licking. Activating one circuit can initiate or prolong a particular component while suppressing competing components, whereas another circuit can terminate the current component and help restart the sequence. These findings suggest that the basal ganglia function less like a simple “action gate” and more like a dynamic coordinator that organizes continuous movements and their transitions.
Past Events
3:00 PM Ramyzy Al-Mulla Lab: Smear (Psych)
3:15 PM Hylen James Lab: Smear (Psych)
3:30 PM Alanna Sowles Lab: Huxtable (Human Phys)
3:45 PM Will Gaston Lab: Wollman (Human Phys)
Abstract- The superior colliculus (SC) is an evolutionarily conserved structure that receives direct retinal input in all vertebrates. It was the most sophisticated visual center until the neocortex evolved in mammals. Even in mice and tree shrews, mammalian species that are increasingly used in vision research, the vast majority of retinal ganglion cells project to the SC, making it a prominent visual structure in these animals. In this talk, I will review our recent functional studies of the mouse SC and describe our current efforts in linking functional properties to genetically identified cell types in both mice and tree shrews.
Dr. Daniel Lashof is a Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute and previously served
as Director of WRl's programmatic work in the United States.
For more than three decades, Dr. Lashof has worked to promote solutions to climate change. Before the World Resources Institute, Dan was the Chief Operating Officer of NextGen Policy Center and previously served as the Director of the Climate and Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
His focus is developing federal and state regulations to place enforceable limits on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants, responsibly scale up carbon dioxide removal, and properly account for the impact of land use in climate and fuels policies. He has participated in scientific assessments of global warming through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has monitored international climate negotiations since their inception. He has testified at numerous Congressional and California legislative hearings
and posts articles regularly on WRI Insights.
Dr. Lashof earned his Bachelor's degree in Physics and Mathematics at Harvard and his
Doctorate from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley.
