Making Connections
Ian Wickersham develops genetic tools that provide more powerful and precise ways to study the organization of the brain. His lab invents techniques for targeting neurons based on their synaptic connectivity and gene expression patterns in order to cause them to express genes that allow the neurons to be studied and controlled by neuroscientists and clinicians. The goal of Wickersham’s work is to provide neuroscience with more effective ways of studying the brain, and potentially to provide clinical neurology with more effective ways of treating disorders of the brain.
More Research
One aspect of Wickersham’s work is to engineer systems to identify and manipulate neurons that are directly synaptically connected either to a targeted single neuron or to a genetically-defined neuronal population of interest. For his graduate thesis, Wickersham and colleagues pioneered the use of recombinant rabies virus as a “monosynaptic tracing” tool for neuroscience. A critical tool for connectomics, it identifies cells directly connected to a targeted neuronal group and allows them to be imaged or functionally manipulated based on their synaptic connectivity and gene expression patterns.
Biography
Ian Wickersham received his PhD in Neurosciences from the University of California, San Diego. He came to MIT in 2007 to work as a postdoc in the labs of Sebastian Seung then Ed Boyden. In 2013 Wickersham started the Genetic Neuroengineering Group at the McGovern Institute.
Personalized Medicine
A fundamental problem in psychiatry is that there are no biological markers for diagnosing mental illness or for indicating how best to treat it. Treatment decisions are based entirely on symptoms, and doctors and their patients will typically try one treatment, then if it does not work, try another, and perhaps another. Satrajit Ghosh hopes to change this picture, and his research suggests that individual brain scans and speaking patterns can hold valuable information for guiding psychiatrists and patients. His research group develops novel analytic platforms that use such information to create robust, predictive models around human health. Current areas include depression, suicide, anxiety disorders, autism, Parkinson’s disease, and brain tumors.
More Research
Ghosh’s research interests span computer science and neuroscience, specifically in the areas of applied machine learning, signal processing, and translational medicine. His current research portfolio comprises projects on spoken communication, brain imaging, and informatics to address gaps in scientific knowledge in three areas: the neural basis and translational applications of speaking, precision psychiatry and medicine, and preserving information for reproducible research.
Biography
Satrajit Ghosh received his BS (with Honors) in Computer Science at the National University of Singapore and his PhD in Cognitive and Neural Systems from Boston University. In addition to his role at the McGovern Institute, Ghosh is an assistant professor in the Department of Otolaryngology at Harvard Medical School. He is also the director of Data Models and Integration project of ReproNim, an NIH P41 Center for Reproducible Neuroimaging Computation. He is also a co-editor-in-chief of BMC NeuroCommons, a journal focussed on enhancing the digital Commons for neuroscience through increased data, software, and reproducible results.
