Wiersma Visiting Professor Lecture: Dr. Kathleen Rockland
Dr. Rockland received her doctorate at Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine (1979), working on feedforward and feedback cortical connections with Dr. Deepak Pandya. She completed postdoctoral studies on patchy horizontal intrinsic collaterals with Jennifer Lund at the Medical University of South Carolina, and began an independent laboratory in 1983 at the E.K. Shriver Center (Waltham, MA), continuing to work on cortical connectivity in non-human primates. In 1988 she joined the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at BUSM as an assistant professor, before moving in 1991 to the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa. A collaboration with Keiji Tanaka (Brain Science Institute at RIKEN, Wako, Japan) led to an invitation to join BSI as lab head, where she established the Lab for Cortical Organization and Systematics (2000). After taking sabbatical leave from BSI at Tonegawa Lab (MIT), she returned to the Dept. of Anatomy and Neurobiology in 2012, where she has started a new lab, partly focused on microstructure of human postmortem cortex.
Please join us on Tuesday, May 21 at 4:00PM for the Wiersma Visiting Professor Lecture* in Chen 100.
The talk will be followed by a Chen Social in the breezeway of the Chen Neuroscience Research Building.
Speaker: Dr. Kathleen Rockland
Title: Axons and Brain Architecture
Abstract: Long-distance axons, although a basic component of interneuronal communication, are still relatively under-investigated, especially in the primate brain. Single axon analysis, however, provides important quantitative data on the number and size of terminal arbors, synaptic number and potential dendritic distribution, multi-laminar termination patterns, and spatial divergence. In this talk, I will discuss anatomical parameters and functional implications, focusing on the connections between primary visual cortex and extrastriate area MT/V5 in the macaque, but including comparisons with corticopulvinar and other connections. Anatomical features will be considered with respect to aspects of network organization, such as shortest pathway, synaptic weights, reciprocity, recurrence (aka "feedback"), and hierarchy. A general observation is the conspicuous heterogeneity of arbor shape and size both across populations and within a single axon. Open questions, such as axon rings and other subcellular features, will be briefly referenced.
Suggested reading
Rockland, K.S. (2020) What we can learn from the complex architecture of single axons. Brain Structure Function 225: 327–1347. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-019-02023-3
*The lecture and visiting professorship are named for Cornelius Wiersma who came to the Biology Department at Caltech in 1934, representing the field of neurophysiology, a precursor to the field of neurobiology. His scientific career focused first on the neuromuscular system, then on the central nervous system, and finally on the visual system.
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