Dr. Suzana Herculano-Houzel, Ph.D., is a biologist and neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University, where she is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and in the Vanderbilt Brain Institute. Since 2023, she is the first female editor-in-chief of The Journal of Comparative Neurology, the main scientific publication in her field. Since 2004, when she realized that neuroscience actually didn’t know what different brains were made of, Prof. Herculano-Houzel developed her own method to turn brains into soup and count cells, and proceeded to apply that to the brains of more than one hundred vertebrate species, in collaboration with various researchers around the world, creating a formidable dataset that she continues to explore in relation to brain scaling and diversity in evolution. Most recently, she showed that theropod dinosaurs had primate-like numbers of neurons; that mammalian brains must use what energy they get, not as much as they demand; and that lifespan scales not with body size or metabolic rate, but with number of cortical neurons. Prof. Herculano-Houzel spoke at TEDGlobal 2013 on “What makes the human brain special?” (over 3.5 million views), and at TEDxNashville 2018 on “Why do we need to go to school, really?”. She has her own YouTube channel, Neuroscience Office Hour, to communicate science to the public, and is the author of the book The Human Advantage: How the Human Brain Became Remarkable (MIT Press, 2016), is working on Fundamental Concepts in Neuroscience, a textbook for MIT Press, and will next write a book on how natural selection is overrated; “survival of the fittest” are the four most toxic words humans have uttered; and that life is really just Whatever Works.
Dr. Axel Nimmerjahn is Physicist for the Max Planck Institute for Medical, Research/University of Heidelberg, Germany and has a Postdoctoral Fellow, Biology and Applied Physics, Stanford Universityan. Currently, is a an Associate Professor, Waitt Advanced Biophotonics Center. Axel Nimmerjahn has spearheaded the development of new microscopy techniques to visualize the structural and functional dynamics of glial cells and their bi-directional interaction with other cells. To enable cellular-resolution measurements under naturalistic conditions, his lab has worked to shrink the size of microscopes to make them wearable.
Dr. Kerstin Lenk, Assistant Professor TU Graz, Austria, received her PhD in computer science from TU Clausthal in Germany. Her first postdoc was in bioinformatics at TU Dresden, Germany. In 2018, Kerstin was awarded with the Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Fellowship for the project "Simulation of local calcium dynamics in human single cell astrocytes and neuron-astrocyte networks".
Her lab's research focuses on three areas: In the computational modeling part, they develop single-cell astrocyte models and neuron-astrocyte network models. The second area is bioinformatics, in which they analyze transcriptomic data of neurons and astrocytes. The third part is the performance of in vitro experiments and the analysis of the measurement results. They develop a lot of analysis tools for neuronal and astrocytic activity to support their experimental collaborators but also to validate their simulation results. She and her team apply all those approaches to diseases like epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and major depressive disorder.
Dr. Carlos Matute, Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of the Basque Country, and founding Scientific Director of ACHUCARRO (Bilbao, Spain). He discovered that oligodendrocytes and myelin are highly vulnerable to glutamate and purinergic agonists, a feature that is relevant to multiple sclerosis and brain ischemia. These findings uncovered the now extended and accepted view that glutamate and ATP excitotoxicity of oligodendrocytes contributes to brain tissue damage in neurological diseases. In turn, his laboratory has found neurotransmitter receptor-mediated mechanisms that promote remyelination. His current research interests focus on the use of myelin as fuel for brain activity and its relevance to multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer´s disease. Recent results in his lab have shown that myelin content is reduced upon endurance exercise.
Dr. Enrica Boda is Associate Professor of Human Anatomy at the University of Turin, Italy. Since 2010, her research has been focused on the mechanisms regulating oligodendrocyte biology and oligodendroglia-neuron crosstalk in physiology and in animal models of neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases, including Multiple Sclerosis (MS).
Specifically, Prof. Boda’s studies focused on mechanisms underlying oligodendrocyte heterogeneity and dysfunctions in animal models of the autosomal recessive primary microcephaly-17 (MCPH17). This study (Boda et al., 2022 Nat Commun, doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-30010-6) provided evidence of cell-intrinsic mechanisms driving oligodendroglia heterogeneous response to DNA damage. With the support of a Telethon grant, ongoing studies aim at sustaining oligodendroglial cell survival/function to reduce epileptic seizures and ataxia in these mice.
Dr. Alfonso Araque is Professor in the Department of Neuroscience in University of Minessota. His research interests focus on the mechanisms, properties and physiological consequences of the communication between neurons and astrocytes. His research seeks to understand how the communication between neurons and astrocytes affects physiological and pathological aspects of brain function. While most studies on drug addiction are focused on neuronal mechanisms, his team aims to elucidate the involvement of astrocytes in behaviors associated with reward signaling and psychostimulant drugs, which may reveal astrocytes as potential targets for treatment of motivation disorders such as drug addiction.
Dr. Eneritz Agirre, Senior researcher in computational biology at the Department of Medical Biochemistry at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. PhD in Biomedicine, working on the nuclear role of Argonaute 1 and the epigenetic regulation of alternative splicing. Post-doctoral at the Institute of Human Genetics with research on co-transcriptional alternative splicing and its regulation by histone modifications. Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow with the study of oligondendroglia using single cell technologies. My research interest focuses in the understanding of mature oligodendrocytes in homeostatic states and in altered conditions due to aging and disease. I use a variety of omics technologies, including transcriptomics and epigenomics information and single cell methods. I am also interested in myelin evolution using different species comparative studies in order to understand the origins of myelination and link it to current neuroinflamatory and demyelinating diseases.
Dr. Ivan Lazcano currently works at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Ivan Lazcano is a researcher who investigates the physiology of the thyroid axis during in differet vertebrates. Currently, he is focusing on the study of thyroid hormones in early retinal development and oligodendrogenesis. One of his most recent studies involves examining myelination patterns in axolotls and zebrafish.
Dr. Mónica López-Hidalgo is an Associate Professor at ENES-Jurquilla, UNAM. Her group is focused on understanding neuron-glia interactions in cognitive processes and how these are affected during aging. We make use of cutting-edge techniques such as calcium imaging in freely moving animals, chemogenetics, electrophysiology, and Magnetic Resonance Imaging, in combination with behavioral tasks.
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Dr. López-Juárez is a molecular neuroscientist specialized in glial cells affiliated with the Health and Biomedical Sciences department at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). He obtained his Bachelor of Science in Biology and Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City. Postdoctoral research at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Ohio, U.S., working on the molecular control of adult neurogenesis. Subsequently recruited as Research Associate by Dr. Nancy Ratner, to lead a team studying the roles of myelinating cells in neurological issues of RASopathies. During this period, he published diverse high impact papers on the topic and defined his future path of research. In 2018, he started his own research laboratory at UTRGV, where he studies myelin-related molecular mechanisms in neurological conditions including learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, ADHD, and dementias. His team uses advanced mouse genetic tools of monogenic disease to understand brain function and disfunction. He is also passionate about teaching graduate and undergraduate courses at UTRGV.
Dr. Lenin Ochoa de la Paz. Full Professor, Faculty of Psychology. Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology of Glia. His lines of research include the determination of the expression and distribution, in Müller glia, of GABAergic receptors in an in vitro model of diabetic retinopathy; Participation of GABAergic receptors in the differentiation process towards neuronal lines of subventricular neural progenitor cells. Characterization of VEGF isoforms and their receptors in Müller glia in an in vitro model of age-related macular edema (AMD); Characterization of structural alterations in the retina and morphofunctional alterations of Müller glia in a preclinical model of autism.