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Events

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) campuses host a variety of events that inform, challenge, and unite the biomedical research community. IRP investigators lead or participate in many of these events, and they regularly present their work at scientific conferences at the NIH and around the world. We invite you to learn about (and possibly join us in) some of our upcoming events:

WALS: The Mouse Ultrasonic Song System

Wednesday, May 16, 2012, 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

NIH Clinical Center (Bldg. 10), Masur Auditorium

Erich D. Jarvis, Ph.D., HHMI Investigator and Associate Professor of Neurobiology at Duke University, will present “Of Mice, Birds and Men: The Mouse Ultrasonic Song System has Features Once Thought Unique to Humans and Song Learning Birds" as part of the Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series (WALS).

From the speaker:  “Humans and song learning birds communicate acoustically using learned vocalizations.  The characteristic features of this social communication behavior include vocal control by forebrain motor areas, a direct cortical projection to brainstem vocal motor neurons, and dependence on auditory feedback to develop and maintain learned vocalizations.  These features have so far not been found in closely related primate and avian species that do not learn vocalizations.  Male mice produce courtship ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) with acoustic features similar to songs of song learning birds.  However, it is assumed that mice lack a forebrain system for vocal modification and that their USVs are innate.  Here, I will present my lab's discovery of the mouse song system and show that it includes a localized motor cortex region active during singing which projects directly to brainstem vocal motor neurons and is necessary for keeping song more stereotyped and on pitch.

        “My lab also discovered that male mice depend on auditory feedback to develop and maintain normal ultrasonic song, and that sub-strains with differences in their songs can imitate each others pitch when cross-housed under competitive social conditions.  I conclude that male mice have at least some neuroanatomical and behavioral features thought to be unique to humans and song learning birds, suggesting that mice have some limited vocal modification abilities or that a reevaluation of species differences is in order.  I hypothesize that the trait of vocal learning is not dichotomous, as long assumed, but a continuum, with mice intermediate between other well-studied species.”

Impact of Ethnicity on Lupus

Thursday, May 17, 2012, 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Natcher Conference Center (Bldg. 45), Balcony A

Graciela S. Alarcón, Jane Knight Lowe Chair of Medicine in Rheumatology, Emeritus, University of Alabama at Birmingham, will present “Impact of Ethnicity on the Course and Outcome of Lupus: Lessons from LUMINA” as part of the Health Disparities Seminar Series.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), or lupus, is a serious and potentially fatal disease that mainly affects young women. The cause of the disease is not known, but it is believed to be an autoimmune disease (an illness that occurs when the body mistakenly detects its own tissue as foreign and attacks itself). The manifestations of lupus are diverse: it can affect many parts of the body, including the joints, skin, kidneys, heart, lungs, blood vessels, and brain. Lupus is two to three times more common in African American women than in Caucasian women and is also more common in women of Hispanic descent. African American and Hispanic women are also more likely to experience more severe disease symptoms, and they accrue damage earlier in the course of the disease and at a faster pace. While genetics play an important role in lupus, research also shows that genes alone do not determine who gets lupus. It is likely that many factors trigger the disease.  Led by Alarcón, investigators with the long-running LUpus in MInority populations NAture vs. nurture (LUMINA) multi-ethnic cohort study, initially funded by NIAMS, are working to reduce these disparities and identify the risk factors for the disease. Alarcón and her team are following 600 Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic patients to determine to what extent the differential outcomes observed in patients with lupus from ethnic minority groups is primarily due to biologic or non-biologic factors. In her presentation, Alarcón will discuss the impact of ethnicity on the course and outcome of lupus, as demonstrated by data from the LUMINA study.

5th Annual NIH Career Symposium

Friday, May 18, 2012, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Natcher Conference Center, Building 45

The 5th Annual NIH Career Symposium highlights the diversity of career choices available to your generation of biomedical researchers.  Whether you are a new graduate student,  postdoc, or clinical fellow just beginning to consider career options or a senior student/fellow ready to look for a job, the NIH Career Symposium is for you.  We invite any postdoc, clinical fellow or graduate student to join us, regardless if you are part of the NIH intramural program or not.

Director’s Seminar Series: Synaptic Plasticity

Friday, May 18, 2012, 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Building 1, Wilson Hall

 

Serena Dudek, Ph.D., will present “New insights into regulating synaptic plasticity from an unexpected place," the final lecture in the 2011–2012 Director's Seminar Series.  Dudek is a principal investigator in the NIEHS Synaptic & Developmental Plasticity Group.  Her lab studies the regulation of synaptic effectiveness and how synaptic changes early in development are consolidated to last a lifetime.

During postnatal development, mammals, including humans, acquire vast amounts of information by interacting with their environments. In contrast to creatures having nervous systems that are fully pre-wired at birth, mammals benefit from an enormous flexibility in behavior due to the driving force of experience on their brain development. This flexibility comes at a potential cost, however, because interaction with noxious or otherwise abnormal environments can cause lasting and often deleterious changes in brain circuitry. Using patch clamp and extracellular recordings in brain slices, confocal microscopic imaging, and molecular and cellular techniques, the group aims to determine how the connections in the brain (synapses) change in response to neuronal activity, what regulates the critical periods of postnatal development when such plasticity is most robust, and why some brain regions are more plastic than others. This research should bring a better understanding of how environmental factors play a role in forming the circuitry of the brain so that the associated problems of brain disease caused by toxicant exposure can then begin to be addressed.