Neuroscience Seminar: Variability, Robustness, Neuromodulation, and Homeostasis of Neurons and Networks
Eve Marder is the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Neuroscience at Brandeis University. Marder is a past President of the Society for Neuroscience (SFN) and was elected in 2007 to the National Academy of Sciences. She is also a member of the American Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Biophysical Society. Throughout her distinguished career she has received many honors including the Women in Neuroscience Miriam Salpeter Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award, the prestigious Ralph W. Gerard Prize in Neuroscience that is the highest award of the Society for Neuroscience honoring outstanding scientists who have made significant contributions to neuroscience throughout their careers, the George A. Miller Award from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, the Karl Spenser Lashley Prize from the American Philosophical Society, the Gruber Prize in Neuroscience and the Education Award from the Society for Neuroscience. She serves on the NIH Director’s BRAIN Working Group.
Dr. Marder studies the dynamics of small neural circuits and her work was instrumental in demonstrating that neuronal circuits are not “hard-wired” but can be reconfigured by neuromodulatory neurons and substances to provide a variety of outputs. For more than 20 years, her lab has combined experimental work with insights from theoretical studies. Her lab pioneered studies of homeostatic regulation of intrinsic membrane properties, and stimulated work on the mechanisms by which brains remain stable while allowing for change during development and learning. The Marder Lab now studies how similar network performance can arise from different sets of underlying network parameters, opening up rigorous studies of the variations in individual brains of normal healthy animals. (Modified from speaker bio, Neuromodulatory Mechanisms, Cell Symposia 2012).