Colloquium on the Brain and Cognition with Ivan Soltesz, PhD, Stanford University

• Date: Thursday, April 17, 2025
• Time: 4:00pm
• Location: 46-3002, Singleton Auditorium (Third floor of MIT Building 46)
• Zoom: https://mit.zoom.us/j/91469352101

Organization and Control of Hippocampal Circuits

When animals are in an off-line, non-locomotor behavioral state, neuronal activity in the hippocampus is thought to be largely disengaged from the present setting to enable cognitive mechanisms such as memory consolidation and planning. But how does the brain re-engage with the present surroundings during this behavioral state and permit access to current sensory information or promote new memory formation? I will present recent results that indicate that dentate spikes may support associative memory during non-locomotor behavior, extending the repertoire of cognitive processes beyond the classical “off-line” functions. In the second part of the talk, I will show new evidence that suggests that a rarely studied part of the hippocampus, the Fasciola cinereum, may play surprisingly significant roles as a novel site of seizure onset and target for interventions in temporal lobe epilepsy in both mice and humans.

Ivan Soltesz Ph.D. is the James R. Doty Professor of Neurosurgery and Neurosciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. He established his laboratory at UC Irvine in 1995, where he served as department Chair from 2006 until his return to Stanford in 2015. He is interested in the nature of inhibition in the CNS. His lab employs experimental and theoretical techniques to explore the synaptic and cellular organization of GABAergic circuits in the hippocampus under normal and pathological conditions.