Join this interactive session as Dr. Leila Reddy discusses her paper, “Human Hippocampal Neurons Track Moments in a Sequence of Events” with JNeurosci Editor-in-Chief Marina Picciotto. Attendees can submit questions at registration and live during the webinar.
Below is the significance statement of the paper published on August 4, 2021, in JNeurosci and authored by Leila Reddy, Benedikt Zoefel, Jessy K. Possel, Judith Peters, Doris E. Dijksterhuis, Marlene Poncet, Elisabeth C. W. van Straaten, Johannes C. Baayen, Sander Idema, and Matthew W. Self.
Episodic memory refers to our ability to remember the what, where, and when of a past experience. Representing time is an important component of this form of memory. Here, we show that neurons in the human hippocampus represent temporal information. This temporal signature was observed both when participants were actively engaged in a memory task, as well as during 10-s-long gaps when they were asked to wait before performing the task. Furthermore, the activity of the population of hippocampal cells allowed for decoding one temporal epoch from another. These results suggest a robust representation of time in the human hippocampus.
Speakers
Leila Reddy, PhD
Leila Reddy is a scientist at the Brain and Cognition Research Center, CNRS, in Toulouse, France. Reddy’s research focusses on the study of the human brain, particularly visual perception, learning and memory. She received her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Pomona College, CA and her PhD in Computation and Neural Systems from Caltech. She completed her postdoctoral training at MIT.
Marina Picciotto, PhD
Marina Picciotto is Charles B. G. Murphy Professor of psychiatry, a professor in the child study center of neuroscience and pharmacology, the director of molecular psychiatry, the deputy chair for basic science research in the department of psychiatry, the deputy director of the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience, and the co-director of the neuroscience research training program in the psychiatry department at Yale University. Picciotto is the editor-in-chief of The Journal of Neuroscience. She previously served on the scientific council of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, as the Treasurer of SfN, and President of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. Her research interests lie in the role of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in mouse models, including research related to addiction, depression, brain development, learning, and appetite. She earned her BS in biology from Stanford University, PhD in molecular neurobiology from Rockefeller University, and completed her postdoctoral training at the Pasteur Institute.