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Spring Semester
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2025-
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2026
The Cognition and Neural Systems (CNS) Journal Club (nee' BCS Journal Club), also known as PSYCH 6271-101, meets on Tuesdays from 11:40 For Spring semester 2009-2010, the Behavioral, Computational, and Systems Neuroscience (BCS) Journal Club will meet on Tuesdays from 12:00 to 1:15 pm in 205 Uris Hall 205.
The overarching theme this semester is Oscillations. Adhering to this theme is not required, but recommended. Please interpret it broadly. Theories of gamma, beta, and theta oscillations in the nervous system are the centroid of intent, but alpha, sleep, circadian, etc. rhythms are also spot-on as are reasonably accessible dynamical systems topics from math and engineering.
To add yourself to the BCS-L mailing list, send a plain-text email to bcs-L-request@cornell.edu with the body of the message saying simply join. The subject line doesn't matter. Sending the message leave instead will unsubscribe you from the list. See Cornell's Lyris HowTo page for further details.
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(across from the elevators).
Your hosts are David Smith and Thomas Cleland.
Papers and notes from previous semesters can be found in the CNS (BCS) meeting archive.
Shortlink to this page: https://cornellneuro.science/cnsjournalclub
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Presentations in the CNS JC are intended to "show us what you are interested in"; i.e., present work within your subfield that illustrates why it is interesting and broadly applicable. It is less important to choose papers that you think will be close to every attendees' heart than it is to choose papers that are blisteringly important or interesting or controversial in your own subfield, and explain/share this with the group. It's good for all of us. The corollary is that journal club members attend regularly, and don't decide whether to attend in a given week based on what is being presented.
Presenting your own work is always welcome, in whatever manner you like.
To add yourself to the journal club mailing list (BCS-L@lists.cornell.edu), or remove yourself from it, follow the instructions at https://it.cornell.edu/simplelists/manage-subscriptions.
You can enroll in the CNS Journal Club for credit (1 CR, S/U) as a Topics in Biopsychology seminar: PSYCH 6271-101. The course requires that you present at least once during the semester and participate actively overall. You are welcome to attend without enrolling, of course, but we do appreciate graduate students enrolling if you plan to attend.
Please contact Thomas Cleland or David Smith with any questions.
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20 January 2026: Organizational Meeting
27 January 2026: NO MEETING
3 February 2026: David Smith
- M. Zipple, B. Loflin, D. Chang Kuo, E. Tan and M. Sheehan (2025). Transfer to a naturalistic setting restructures fear responses in laboratory mice. Curr Bio 35:1157-76.
10 February 2026: NO MEETING
- Instead, please attend Micaela Rodriguez' "Human Bonding" lecture, 11:00 - 12:30, in G90 Uris Hall. (Dr. Rodriguez is a candidate for a faculty position in Psychology).
17 February 2026: FEBRUARY BREAK - NO MEETING
24 February 2026: Lindsay Sailer
- Nardou R, Sawyer E, et al (2023). Psychedelics reopen the social reward learning critical period. Nature 618: 790–798.
- Lindsay has generously shared her slide deck, with background info and related context.
3 March 2026: James Cunningham
- Asumbisa K, Peyrache A, Trenholm S (2025). Stereo olfaction underlies stable coding of head direction in blind mice. Nature Communications 16:3545.
10 March 2026: Patryk Ziobro
- Original research presentation (!)
17 March 2026: David Zheng
- Jung J, You I-J, Shin S (2025). Thalamo-hippocampal pathway determines aggression and self-harm. Science Advances 11: eady5540.
24 March 2026: Cynthia Wu
- Wolf D, Oettle L-L, Sanchez-Guardado L, Linster C, Lois C, Kelsch W (2026). Deletion of NPAS4 in olfactory bulb principal neurons alters E/I balance and impairs decoding of chemically similar odor molecules. Journal of Physiology 604.1: 527-547.
- Cynthia will also show some of her own work, some of which relates to the immediate-early gene Npas4. Some related papers:
- A preprint presenting "X-TRAP" transgenic mice ... essentially a double FosTRAP strain using two different inducers of Fos-gated fluorophore expression.
- The original paper introducing the Xon method, used as the second "TRAP"-like method in the "X-TRAP" paper.
31 March 2026: SPRING BREAK - NO MEETING
7 April 2026: TBD
14 April 2026: Wangchen Pei
- Perez EC, Elie JE, Soulage CO, Soula HA, Mathevon N, Vignal C (2012). The acoustic expression of stress in a songbird: Does corticosterone drive isolation-induced modifications of zebra finch calls? Hormones and Behavior 61: 573-581.
- For additional background reading of potential interest, there is this review:
- MacDougall-Shackleton SA, Spencer KA (2012). Developmental stress and birdsong: current evidence and future directions. Journal of Ornithology 153 (Suppl): S105-S117.
21 April 2026: No meeting
28 April 2026: No meeting
5 May 2026: Shiping Li
- J. Zhao, B. An, N. Cheng, Q. Dong, C. Wang, X. Chen (2025). Gravity-dependent choice of frame of reference in the posterior parietal cortex. Current Biology 35, 4882–4897.
See you in the fall!
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26 January 2010: Organizational Meeting
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- No readings.
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2 February 2010: Thomas Cleland
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- Fries, Nikolic, and Singer (2007). The gamma cycle. Trends in Neurosciences.
- Optional/supplementary: Dan and Poo (2004). Spike Timing-Dependent Plasticity of Neural Circuits. Review in Neuron.
In discussion, Patrick brought up Li et al (2004), a paper from Mu-ming Poo's lab showing that those presynaptic neurons that spike early, and that consequently (via STDP) have their synaptic weights upon a postsynaptic neuron strengthened, are also themselves rendered more excitable. That is, by this mechanism STDP can "work on the presynaptic neuron" as well as on its output synapse. The net effect of this can be to durably group a set of early-firing neurons together into a fully synchronous ensemble evoking activity in that postsynaptic cell.
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9 February 2010: Christina Sill
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- Hasselmo, Giocomo, and Yoshida (2009). Cellular dynamical mechanisms for encoding the time and place of events along spatiotemporal trajectories in episodic memory. Behavioral Brain Research.
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16 February 2010: Patrick Gill
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- Fusi, Drews, and Abbott (2005). Cascade models of synaptically stored memories. Neuron.
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23 February 2010: NO MEETING
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- No Meeting. If you come, nobody will be there except for you.
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2 March 2010: Helene Porte
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- Mahon, Vautrelle, et al (2006). Distinct patterns of striatal medium spiny neuron activity during the natural sleep-wake cycle. J. Neuroscience.
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9 March 2010: Sasha Devore
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- Schroeder et al. (2008). Neuronal oscillations and visual amplification of speech. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
In discussion, Guoshi brought up this modeling paper analyzing the property that visual input (lip reading) facilitates auditory input most effectively under moderate noise conditions.
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16 March 2010: Thomas Cleland
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- Fries (2005). A mechanism for cognitive dynamics: neuronal communication through neuronal coherence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
- Schoffelen, Oostenveld, and Fries (2005). Neuronal coherence as a mechanism of effective corticospinal interaction. Science.
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23 March 2010: SPRING BREAK
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- No meeting, because it's spring break. But to keep you in good form, take a look at this paper that Shane found. Contrary to what I presented at the beginning of the semester, these authors argue that extracellular fields per se CAN directly affect neuronal activity. If this effect is sufficiently true to matter, this would provide another mechanism by which neuronal populations can be coordinated (or, in some circumstances, an additional problem to be overcome in trying to coordinate them). Maybe we'll get a chance to talk about it later this semester.
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30 March 2010: SiWei Luo
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- TBD.
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6 April 2010: Guoshi Li
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- TBD.
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13 April 2010: Anuttama Sheela Mohan
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- TBD.
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20 April 2010: Shane Peace and Ben Johnson
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- Results from planar-array multielectrode slice recordings of gamma oscillations in the mouse olfactory bulb.
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27 April 2010: TBD
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4 May 2010: Mike Wojnowicz
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