Systems neuroscience is a subdiscipline of neuroscience and systems biology that studies the function of neural circuits and systems. It is an umbrella term, encompassing a number of areas of study concerned with how nerve cells behave when connected together to form neural networks. At this level of analysis, neuroscientists study how different neural circuits analyze sensory information, form perceptions of the external world, make decisions, and execute movements. Researchers in systems neuroscience are concerned with the relation between molecular and cellular approaches to understanding brain structure and function, as well as with the study of high-level mental functions such as language, memory, and self-awareness (which are the purview of behavioral and cognitive neuroscience). Systems neuroscientists typically employ techniques for understanding networks of neurons while they function in vivo (e.g. electrophysiology (single or multi-electrode recording), in vivo imaging, fMRI, PET). The term is commonly used in an educational framework: a common sequence of graduate school neuroscience courses consists of cellular/molecular neuroscience for the first semester, then systems neuroscience for the second semester. It is also sometimes used to distinguish a subdivision within a neuroscience department at an academic institution.

See also[link]

• Motor system
• Sensory system
• Sensory neuroscience
• Visual system
• Auditory system
• Olfactory system
• Gustatory system
• Somatosensory system
• Neural oscillation

References[link]

• Bear, M. F. et al. Eds. (1995). Neuroscience: Exploring The Brain. Baltimore, Maryland, Williams and Wilkins. ISBN 0-7817-3944-6
• Hemmen J. L., Sejnowski T. J. (2006). 23 Problems in Systems Neuroscience. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514822-3

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Demis Hassabis (born 27 July 1976, United Kingdom) is a computer game designer, AI programmer, neuroscientist and world-class games player. A child prodigy in chess, he reached master standard at the age of 13 with an Elo rating of 2300 (at the time the second highest rated player in the world Under-14 after Judit Polgar who had a rating of 2335). After finishing his A-Level exams two years early he began his computer games career at Bullfrog Productions, first level designing on Syndicate and then at 17 co-designing and lead programming on the classic game Theme Park, with the games designer Peter Molyneux, which went on to sell several million copies and win a Golden Joystick Award. Hassabis then left Bullfrog to take up his place at Queens' College, University of Cambridge where he graduated from the Computer Science Tripos in 1997 with a Double First.

Following his graduation Hassabis worked briefly as a Lead AI programmer on the Lionhead Studios title Black & White before founding Elixir Studios in 1998, a London-based independent games developer. He grew the company to 60 people, signing publishing deals with Vivendi Universal and Microsoft, and was the executive designer of the BAFTA-nominated Republic: The Revolution and Evil Genius games.

The release of Elixir's pioneering first game, Republic: The Revolution,^[1] was delayed several times due to its ambitious scope. The final game was reduced from its original vision and greeted with lukewarm reviews, receiving a Metacritic score of 62/100. Evil Genius fared much better with a score of 77/100, but in April 2005 the intellectual property and technology rights were sold to various publishers and the studio was closed.

Hassabis then left the games industry, switching to cognitive neuroscience, citing a desire to get back to his lifelong passion of developing artificial intelligence technology.^[2] Working in the field of autobiographical memory and amnesia he has authored several highly-cited and influential papers, including his most prominent work to date, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in early 2007.^[3] It demonstrated that patients with damage to their hippocampus, known to cause amnesia, were also unable to imagine themselves in new experiences. Importantly this established a link between the constructive process of imagination and the reconstructive process of episodic memory recall. Based on these findings and a follow-up fMRI study,^[4] Hassabis developed his ideas into a new theoretical account of the episodic memory system identifying scene construction, the generation and online maintenance of a complex and coherent scene, as a key process underlying both memory recall and imagination.^[5] This work was covered in the mainstream media^[6] and was listed in the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of the year (at number 9) by the journal Science.^[7]

Recently some of Hassabis' findings and interpretations have been challenged by other researchers: A paper by Larry R. Squire and colleagues ^[8] reported a dissociation between hippocampal lesions and imagination deficits as well as between amnesia and imagination deficits. Furthermore, Squire and colleagues questioned whether the lesions of the patients tested by Hassabis and colleagues were restricted to the hippocampus. The debate is ongoing.^[9][10]

Hassabis received his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from UCL in 2009 and is continuing his computational neuroscience research as a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the Gatsby Unit, UCL and in collaboration with groups at MIT and Harvard.

Hassabis won the world games championship at the Mind Sports Olympiad a record five times, prior to his retirement from competitive play in 2002, and is an expert player of many board games including chess, diplomacy, shogi and poker.^[11][12] He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) in 2009.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Demis Hassabis at MobyGames
• Demis Hassabis at the Internet Movie Database
• Demis Hassabis rating card at FIDE

Douglas Armstrong is a former City Councillor on the Auckland City Council, New Zealand for the Citizens & Ratepayers ticket.

Cr Armstrong was first elected in 2001 for the Citizens & Ratepayers ticket, and served as the chairman of Finance at Auckland City between 2001–2004 and 2007 onwards. He was also the deputy leader of the Citizens & Ratepayers ticket from October 2004, serving under the leadership of David Hay.

In October 2010 Armstrong unsuccessfully stood as a Citizens & Ratepayers candidate on the Orakei Ward of the new Auckland Council, he was defeated by Cameron Brewer, an independent.^[1]

Prior to his election as councillor for the centre-right Eastern Bays ward, Armstrong was the Chief Executive Officer of Unitec, one of Auckland's polytechnical institutes. He was trained as a Civil Engineer and is a past president of the Institution of Professional Engineers NZ and former member of the Prime Ministers Enterprise Council.

Armstrong was a recipient of the Queens Service Order for services to tertiary education, and is also a trustee of the Sir Woolf Fisher Trust for excellence in education.

References[link]

Biographical details[link]

Link to his biography on the Auckland City Council pages

Edvard Moser is a Norwegian psychologist, neuroscientist and Founding Director of The Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and Centre for the Biology of Memory (KI/CBM) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway.

May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser were appointed associate professors in psychology and neuroscience at NTNU in 1996, less than one year after their Ph. D defenses. They established The Centre for the Biology of Memory (CBM) in 2002 and the Kavli Institute (the 15th in the world and the 4th in neuroscience) in 2007. Edvard and his wife May-Britt Moser have pioneered research on the brain's mechanism for representing space during the last decade.

The Research Institutes[link]

The scientific goal of the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience is to advance our understanding of neural circuits and systems. By focusing on spatial representation and memory, the investigators hope to uncover general principles of neural network computation in the mammalian cortex.

The Kavli Institute, supported by the Kavli Foundation, coexists with the Centre for the Biology of Memory (CBM), but the scope of the Institute is broader and more long-term. CBM is part of the Centre of Excellence scheme of the Research Council of Norway. The KI/CBM is also funded by the EU’s Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7) and an Advanced Investigator Grant from the European Research Council(ERC).

The Research[link]

May-Britt and Edvard Moser have studied how spatial location and spatial memory are computed in the brain. Their most famous contribution is probably the discovery in 2005 of entorhinal grid cells (Hafting et al., Nature 2005), which points to the entorhinal cortex as a hub for the brain network that makes us find our way. The discovery of the grid cells showed for the first time that the rat brain has its own universal map for encoding self-position in any environment. The discovery opened up new opportunities for investigating the cognitive functioning of the brain. The mapping system is probably also found in the human brain and that of other mammals.

The Mosers and the staff of researchers at the KI/CBM have shown how a variety of functional cell types in the entorhinal microcircuit contribute to representation of self-location, how the outputs of the circuit are used by memory networks in the hippocampus, and how episodic memories are separated from each other in the early stages of the hippocampal memory storage. The KI/CBM researchers have also discovered a new type of brain cells that registers borders and boundaries, and that the place cells in the hippocampus can operate at scales varying from about 50 centimetres to 10 metres.

Career[link]

Edvard Moser received three degrees from the University of Oslo, one in Mathematics and Statistics in 1985, one in Psychology in 1990 and one in Neurobiology in 1990. He thereafter obtained his Ph.D. in Neurophysiology from the University of Oslo in 1995, under the supervision of professor Per Andersen. Dr. Moser went on to undertake postdoctoral training with Richard Morris at the Centre for Neuroscience, University of Edinburgh from 1994 to 1996, and was a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the laboratory of John O'Keefe at the University College, London. Dr. Moser returned to Norway in 1996 to be appointed Associate Professor in Biological Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, which he held until 1998. In the same year, Dr. Moser was promoted to Full Professor of Neuroscience at NTNU. Additionally, Dr. Moser is also the founding director of the NTNU Centre for the Biology of Memory (2002) and the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience (2007).

He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.^[1]

Selected publications[link]

• Moser, E.I., Mathiesen, I. & Andersen, P. (1993). Association between brain temperature and dentate field potentials in exploring and swimming rats. Science, 259, 1324-1326.
• Brun, V.H., Otnæss, M.K., Molden, S., Steffenach, H.-A., Witter, M.P., Moser, M.-B., Moser, E.I. (2002). Place cells and place representation maintained by direct entorhinal-hippocampal circuitry. Science, 296, 2089-2284.
• Fyhn, M., Molden, S., Witter, M.P., Moser, E.I. and Moser, M.-B. (2004). Spatial representation in the entorhinal cortex.Science, 305, 1258-1264.
• Leutgeb, S., Leutgeb, J.K., Treves, A., Moser, M.-B. and Moser, E.I. (2004). Distinct ensemble codes in hippocampal areas CA3 and CA1. Science, 305, 1295-1298.
• Leutgeb, S., Leutgeb, J.K., Barnes, C.A., Moser, E.I., McNaughton, B.L., and Moser, M.-B (2005). Independent codes for spatial and episodic memory in the hippocampus. Science, 309, 619-623.
• Hafting, T., Fyhn, M., Molden, S., Moser, M.-B., and Moser, E.I. (2005). Microstructure of a spatial map in the entorhinal cortex.Nature, 436, 801-806.
• Colgin, L.L, and Moser, E.I. (2006). Rewinding the memory record. Nature, 440, 615-617.
• Sargolini, F., Fyhn, M., Hafting, T., McNaughton, B.L., Witter, M.P., Moser, M.-B., and Moser, E.I. (2006). Conjunctive representation of position, direction and velocity in entorhinal cortex. Science, 312, 754-758.
• Leutgeb, J.K., Leutgeb, S., Moser, M.-B., and Moser, E.I. (2007). Pattern separation in dentate gyrus and CA3 of the hippocampus. Science, 315, 961-966.
• Fyhn, M., Hafting, T., Treves, A., Moser, M.-B. and Moser, E.I. (2007). Hippocampal remapping and grid realignment in entorhinal cortex. Nature, 446, 190-194.
• Hafting, T., Fyhn, M., Bonnevie, T., Moser, M.-B. and Moser, E.I. (2008). Hippocampus-independent phase precession in entorhinal grid cells. Nature 453, 1248-1252.
• Kjelstrup, K.B., Solstad, T., Brun, V.H., Hafting, T., Leutgeb, S., Witter, M.P., Moser, E.I. and Moser, M.-B. (2008). Finite scales of spatial representation in the hippocampus. Science 321, 140-143.
• Solstad, T., Boccara, C.N., Kropff, E., Moser, M.-B. and Moser, E.I. (2008). Representation of geometric borders in the entorhinal cortex. Science, 322, 1865-1868.

Honours[link]

2011  : Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine
2008  : 30th Eric K. Fernström’s Great Nordic Prize (Fernström Foundation, University of Lund)
2006  : 10th Prix "Liliane Bettencourt pour les Sciences du Vivant" 2006 (Fondation Bettencourt, Paris)
2006  : 14th Betty and David Koetser Award for Brain Research (University of Zürich)
2005  : 28th annual W. Alden Spencer Award (College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University)
1999  : Prize for young scientists awarded by the Royal Norwegian Academy for Sciences and Letters

Other[link]

Edvard Moser has been a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors in Science since 2004 and he has been Reviewing Editor for Journal of Neuroscience since 2005. Edvard Moser chaired the Programme Committee of the European Neuroscience meeting (FENS Forum) in 2006.

References[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2012)

Torsten Wiesel
At a conference in 2006
Born	(1924-06-03) 3 June 1924 (age 88) Uppsala, Sweden
Nationality	Swedish
Known for	visual system
Notable awards	1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Torsten Nils Wiesel (born 3 June 1924) was a Swedish co-recipient with David H. Hubel of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system; the prize was shared with Roger W. Sperry for his independent research on the cerebral hemispheres.

Biography[link]

Wiesel was born in Uppsala, Sweden in 1924, the youngest of five children. In 1947, he began his scientific career in Carl Gustaf Bernhard's laboratory at the Karolinska Institute, where he received his medical degree in 1954. He went on to teach in the Institute's department of physiology and worked in the child psychiatry unit of the Karolinska Hospital. In 1955 he moved to the United States to work at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine under Stephen Kuffler. Wiesel began a fellowship in ophthalmology, and in 1958 he became an assistant professor. That same year, he met David Hubel, beginning a collaboration that would last over twenty years. In 1959 Wiesel and Hubel moved to Harvard University. He became an instructor in pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, beginning a 24-year career with the university. He became professor in the new department of neurobiology in 1968 and its chair in 1971.

In 1983, Wiesel joined the faculty of Rockefeller University as Vincent and Brooke Astor Professor and head of the Laboratory of Neurobiology. He was president of the university from 1991 to 1998.^[1] At Rockefeller University he remains the director of the Shelby White and Leon Levy Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior.

From 2000-2009, Wiesel served as Secretary-General of the Human Frontier Science Program, an organization headquartered in Strasbourg, France, which supports international and interdisciplinary collaboration between investigators in the life sciences. Wiesel also has chaired the scientific advisory board of China's National Institute of Biological Science (NIBS) in Beijing, and co-chairs the board of governors of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST). He is also member of the boards of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, the Hospital for Special Surgery, and an advisory board member of the European Brain Research Institute (EBRI).

Wiesel has also served as chair of the board of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center (1995–2001), president of the International Brain Research Organization (1998–2004). He was chair of the board of governors of the New York Academy of Sciences (2001–2006); and he was the academy's chairman and interim director in 2001-2002.^[2]

In 2007, the Torsten Wiesel Research Institute was established in Chengdu, China, by the World Eye Organization at West China Hospital, Sichuan University, to engage in basic and clinical research, especially on eye diseases most prevalent in Asia.

Wiesel is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts,^[3] and a foreign fellow of the Indian National Science Academy.

Research[link]

The Hubel and Wiesel experiments greatly expanded the scientific knowledge of sensory processing. In one experiment, done in 1959, they inserted a microelectrode into the primary visual cortex of an anesthetized cat. They then projected patterns of light and dark on a screen in front of the cat. They found that some neurons fired rapidly when presented with lines at one angle, while others responded best to another angle. They called these neurons "simple cells." Still other neurons, which they termed "complex cells," responded best to lines of a certain angle moving in one direction. These studies showed how the visual system builds an image from simple stimuli into more complex representations.^[4]

In 1978, Wiesel and Hubel were awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University.

Hubel and Wiesel received the Nobel Prize 1981 for their work on ocular dominance columns in the 1960s and 1970s. By depriving kittens from using one eye, they showed that columns in the primary visual cortex receiving inputs from the other eye took over the areas that would normally receive input from the deprived eye. These kittens also did not develop areas receiving input from both eyes, a feature needed for binocular vision. Hubel and Wiesel's experiments showed that the ocular dominance develops irreversibly early in childhood development. These studies opened the door for the understanding and treatment of childhood cataracts and strabismus. They were also important in the study of cortical plasticity.^[4]

Wiesel was among the eight 2005 recipients of the National Medal of Science.^[5]

In 2006, he was awarded the Ramon Y Cajal Gold Medal from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas). In 2007, both Wiesel and Hubel were awarded the Marshall M. Parks, MD Medal from The Children's Eye Foundation.

Human rights[link]

Wiesel has done much work as a global human rights advocate. He served for 10 years (1994–2004) as chair of the Committee of Human Rights of the National Academies of Science in the U.S.A., as well as the International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies.^[6] He was awarded the David Rall Medal from the Institute of Medicine in 2005, in recognition of this important work.^{[citation needed]} In 2009, Wiesel was awarded the Grand Cordon Order of the Rising Sun Medal in Japan.

He is a founding member of the Israeli-Palestinian Science Organization, a nongovernmental nonprofit established in 2004 to support collaborative research between scientists in Israel and Palestine.^[6]

In 2001, Wiesel was nominated for a position on an advisory panel in the National Institutes of Health to advise on assisting research in developing countries. Republican Tommy Thompson, who at the time was Secretary of Health and Human Services, rejected Wiesel. In addition to Wiesel, Thompson's office rejected another 18 (out of 26) nominations and in return recommended other scientists that whistleblower Gerald Keusch described in an interview as "lightweights" with "no scientific credibility". When Wiesel's name was rejected, an official in Thompson's office told Keusch that Wiesel had "signed too many full-page letters in The New York Times critical of President Bush." This incident was cited by the advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists as part of a report detailing their allegations of abuse of science under President George W. Bush's administration.^[7][8]

Selected list of honors and awards[link]

• Order of the Rising Sun, Grand Cordon, 2009 (Japan).^[9]
• National Medal of Science, 2005 (US).^[5]
• Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1981

See also[link]

• David H. Hubel
• Single-unit recording

Publications[link]

• Hubel, D. H. & T. N. Wiesel, Receptive Fields Of Single Neurones In The Cat's Striate Cortex, Journal of Physiology, (1959) I48, 574-59I.

• Hubel, D. H. & T. N. Wiesel. Receptive Fields, Binocular Interaction And Functional Architecture In The Cat's Visual Cortex, Journal of Physiology, (1962), 160, pp. 106–154, With 2 plates and 20 text-figures.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Berlucchi, Giovanni (2006). "Revisiting the 1981 Nobel Prize to Roger Sperry, David Hubel, and Torsten Wiesel on the occasion of the centennial of the Prize to Golgi and Cajal.". Journal of the history of the neurosciences 15 (4): pp. 369–75. 2006 Dec. DOI:10.1080/09647040600639013. PMID 16997764 
• Shampo, M A; Kyle, R A (1994). "Torsten Wiesel--Swedish neurobiologist wins Nobel Prize.". Mayo Clin. Proc. 69 (11): pp. 1026. 1994 Nov. PMID 7967753 
• Korczyn, A (1981). "[Nobel prize winners in medicine--1981 (Torsten Wiesel, David Hubel)]". Harefuah 101 (12): pp. 378–9. 1981 Dec 15. PMID 7042494 
• Prasanna, Venkhatesh V (2011). "Do we learn to see?". Resonance: Journal of Science Education 16 (1): pp. 88–99. 2011 Jan 12.http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12045-011-0013-4. 

External links[link]

• Nobel Prize Biography
• The Official Site of Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize