Alev Erisir | |
---|---|
Born | Kastamonu, Turkey |
Citizenship | Turkey, USA |
Occupation | Academic |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Istanbul University, Stony Brook University |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Chair of Psychology Department,University of Virginia |
Alev Erisir is a Turkish-American neuroscientist. [1] She is a professor of psychology and the department chair at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. [2] Her primary research areas include synaptic connectivity in the visual and taste systems,neuronal circuit plasticity,and ultrastructural neuroanatomy. [1] [3]
Erisir was born in Kastamonu,Turkey. Her father was stationed in Kastamonu as a malaria eradication doctor. As an infant,Erisir moved with her family to Canakkale,Turkey,where she grew up until the age of 11. The family then moved to Istanbul,Turkey,where Erisir completed her secondary education. In 1986,following high school graduation,Erisir attended Istanbul University School of Medicine and received her MD. In 1996,Erisir graduated from the State University of New York at Stony Brook with a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience. [2]
Erisir completed postdoctoral training at New York University (NYU) Center for Neural Science. She completed her training under the guidance of Chiye Aoki. In Aoki's laboratory,Professor Erisir trained specifically in Electron Microscopy. After completing her training at NYU,Erisir completed a one-year postdoctoral appointment at New York Medical College (NYMC) in the department of Physiology. Following her time at NYMC,Erisir returned to NYU this time as a Research Assistant Professor. [4]
In 2000,Erisir started working at University of Virginia (UVA) as an assistant professor. In 2013,she was granted professor status at UVA. During her time at UVA,Erisir has served in several administrative roles,including co-director of the neuroscience graduate program,director of the cognitive science program,and director of the neuroscience undergraduate program. In 2016,she was appointed to be the chair of the psychology department at UVA. [4]
At UVA,Erisir's research has consisted of investigating ocular dominance column plasticity using several different techniques,brain stem gustatory circuitry,the aging brain and its pathology,and three-dimensional connectomics. [4]
Erisir conducts studies on cellular mechanisms within the aging brain and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. [4] Her work examines the relationship between hyperactive oligodendrocytes and cognitive impairments in Alzheimer's mouse models. [4] Additionally,Erisir's research examines proteins such as beta-amyloid and tau that result in the loss of synaptic plasticity. [5]
In 2008,Erisir received a University of Virginia Mead Grant,which funded an opportunity for Erisir to take undergraduates to the annual Society of Neuroscience conference. [6] In 2010,she mentored a research project that investigated rodent neural circuitry between the brainstem and the oral cavity. This project was selected by the University of Virginia to receive the "Double Hoo" Grant. [7]
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: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of September 2024 (link)A dendritic spine is a small membranous protrusion from a neuron's dendrite that typically receives input from a single axon at the synapse. Dendritic spines serve as a storage site for synaptic strength and help transmit electrical signals to the neuron's cell body. Most spines have a bulbous head, and a thin neck that connects the head of the spine to the shaft of the dendrite. The dendrites of a single neuron can contain hundreds to thousands of spines. In addition to spines providing an anatomical substrate for memory storage and synaptic transmission, they may also serve to increase the number of possible contacts between neurons. It has also been suggested that changes in the activity of neurons have a positive effect on spine morphology.
Glia, also called glial cells (gliocytes) or neuroglia, are non-neuronal cells in the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system that do not produce electrical impulses. The neuroglia make up more than one half the volume of neural tissue in the human body. They maintain homeostasis, form myelin in the peripheral nervous system, and provide support and protection for neurons. In the central nervous system, glial cells include oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, ependymal cells and microglia, and in the peripheral nervous system they include Schwann cells and satellite cells.
The subthalamic nucleus (STN) is a small lens-shaped nucleus in the brain where it is, from a functional point of view, part of the basal ganglia system. In terms of anatomy, it is the major part of the subthalamus. As suggested by its name, the subthalamic nucleus is located ventral to the thalamus. It is also dorsal to the substantia nigra and medial to the internal capsule. It was first described by Jules Bernard Luys in 1865, and the term corpus Luysi or Luys' body is still sometimes used.
Chorda tympani is a branch of the facial nerve that carries gustatory (taste) sensory innervation from the front of the tongue and parasympathetic (secretomotor) innervation to the submandibular and sublingual salivary glands.
The subiculum is the most inferior component of the hippocampal formation. It lies between the entorhinal cortex and the CA1 subfield of the hippocampus proper.
In neuroanatomy, thalamocortical radiations, also known as thalamocortical fibers, are the efferent fibers that project from the thalamus to distinct areas of the cerebral cortex. They form fiber bundles that emerge from the lateral surface of the thalamus.
In neuroscience, Golgi cells are the most abundant inhibitory interneurons found within the granular layer of the cerebellum. Golgi cells can be found in the granular layer at various layers. The Golgi cell is essential for controlling the activity of the granular layer. They were first identified as inhibitory in 1964. It was also the first example of an inhibitory feedback network in which the inhibitory interneuron was identified anatomically. Golgi cells produce a wide lateral inhibition that reaches beyond the afferent synaptic field and inhibit granule cells via feedforward and feedback inhibitory loops. These cells synapse onto the dendrite of granule cells and unipolar brush cells. They receive excitatory input from mossy fibres, also synapsing on granule cells, and parallel fibers, which are long granule cell axons. Thereby this circuitry allows for feed-forward and feed-back inhibition of granule cells.
Brodmann area 30, also known as agranular retrolimbic area 30, is a subdivision of the cytoarchitecturally defined retrosplenial region of the cerebral cortex. In the human it is located in the isthmus of cingulate gyrus. Cytoarchitecturally it is bounded internally by the granular retrolimbic area 29, dorsally by the ventral posterior cingulate area 23 and ventrolaterally by the ectorhinal area 36 (Brodmann-1909).
The superior olivary complex (SOC) or superior olive is a collection of brainstem nuclei that is located in pons, functions in multiple aspects of hearing and is an important component of the ascending and descending auditory pathways of the auditory system. The SOC is intimately related to the trapezoid body: most of the cell groups of the SOC are dorsal to this axon bundle while a number of cell groups are embedded in the trapezoid body. Overall, the SOC displays a significant interspecies variation, being largest in bats and rodents and smaller in primates.
Bursting, or burst firing, is an extremely diverse general phenomenon of the activation patterns of neurons in the central nervous system and spinal cord where periods of rapid action potential spiking are followed by quiescent periods much longer than typical inter-spike intervals. Bursting is thought to be important in the operation of robust central pattern generators, the transmission of neural codes, and some neuropathologies such as epilepsy. The study of bursting both directly and in how it takes part in other neural phenomena has been very popular since the beginnings of cellular neuroscience and is closely tied to the fields of neural synchronization, neural coding, plasticity, and attention.
In neuroscience, homeostatic plasticity refers to the capacity of neurons to regulate their own excitability relative to network activity. The term homeostatic plasticity derives from two opposing concepts: 'homeostatic' and plasticity, thus homeostatic plasticity means "staying the same through change". In the nervous system, neurons must be able to evolve with the development of their constantly changing environment while simultaneously staying the same amidst this change. This stability is important for neurons to maintain their activity and functionality to prevent neurons from carcinogenesis. At the same time, neurons need to have flexibility to adapt to changes and make connections to cope with the ever-changing environment of a developing nervous system.
In the hippocampus, the mossy fiber pathway consists of unmyelinated axons projecting from granule cells in the dentate gyrus that terminate on modulatory hilar mossy cells and in Cornu Ammonis area 3 (CA3), a region involved in encoding short-term memory. These axons were first described as mossy fibers by Santiago Ramón y Cajal as they displayed varicosities along their lengths that gave them a mossy appearance.
Kalirin, also known as Huntingtin-associated protein-interacting protein (HAPIP), protein duo (DUO), or serine/threonine-protein kinase with Dbl- and pleckstrin homology domain, is a protein that in humans is encoded by the KALRN gene. Kalirin was first identified in 1997 as a protein interacting with huntingtin-associated protein 1. Is also known to play an important role in nerve growth and axonal development.
The gustatory nucleus is the rostral part of the solitary nucleus located in the medulla. The gustatory nucleus is associated with the sense of taste and has two sections, the rostral and lateral regions. A close association between the gustatory nucleus and visceral information exists for this function in the gustatory system, assisting in homeostasis - via the identification of food that might be possibly poisonous or harmful for the body. There are many gustatory nuclei in the brain stem. Each of these nuclei corresponds to three cranial nerves, the facial nerve (VII), the glossopharyngeal nerve (IX), and the vagus nerve (X) and GABA is the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter involved in its functionality. All visceral afferents in the vagus and glossopharyngeal nerves first arrive in the nucleus of the solitary tract and information from the gustatory system can then be relayed to the thalamus and cortex.
The nucleus reuniens is a region of the thalamic midline nuclear group. In the human brain, it is located in the interthalamic adhesion.
The name granule cell has been used for a number of different types of neurons whose only common feature is that they all have very small cell bodies. Granule cells are found within the granular layer of the cerebellum, the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, the superficial layer of the dorsal cochlear nucleus, the olfactory bulb, and the cerebral cortex.
The parabrachial nuclei, also known as the parabrachial complex, are a group of nuclei in the dorsolateral pons that surrounds the superior cerebellar peduncle as it enters the brainstem from the cerebellum. They are named from the Latin term for the superior cerebellar peduncle, the brachium conjunctivum. In the human brain, the expansion of the superior cerebellar peduncle expands the parabrachial nuclei, which form a thin strip of grey matter over most of the peduncle. The parabrachial nuclei are typically divided along the lines suggested by Baxter and Olszewski in humans, into a medial parabrachial nucleus and lateral parabrachial nucleus. These have in turn been subdivided into a dozen subnuclei: the superior, dorsal, ventral, internal, external and extreme lateral subnuclei; the lateral crescent and subparabrachial nucleus along the ventrolateral margin of the lateral parabrachial complex; and the medial and external medial subnuclei
HSD2 neurons are a small group of neurons in the brainstem which are uniquely sensitive to the mineralocorticosteroid hormone aldosterone, through expression of HSD11B2. They are located within the caudal medulla oblongata, in the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS). HSD2 neurons are activated during a prolonged deficit in body sodium or fluid volume, as occurs after dietary sodium deprivation or during frank hypovolemia. They are also activated by supraphysiologic stimulation of the mineralocorticoid receptor. They are inactivated when salt is ingested. To date, HSD2 neurons have been identified and studied only in rats and mice.
Unipolar brush cells (UBCs) are a class of excitatory glutamatergic interneuron found in the granular layer of the cerebellar cortex and also in the granule cell domain of the cochlear nucleus.
Susan Ellen Shore is an American audiologist who is the Merle Lawrence Collegiate Professor of Otolaryngology at the University of Michigan. She was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2021.