Aaron Milstein
@neurosutras
Computational neuroscientist studying learning and memory in health and disease. Dad, yogi, Assistant Professor at Rutgers University.
We also found that a GIRK activator drug ML297 reverses this phenotype in mouse brain slices. (9/11)
This increases dendritic excitability, leading to longer duration dendritic calcium spikes. We speculate that this would impact learning by disregulating top-down modulation of synaptic plasticity. (8/11)
we find that I80T mutation in the G protein subunit GBeta1 specifically disrupts signalling between dendritic GABA(B) receptors and GIRK channels. (7/11)
It has recently become clear that many neurodevelopmental disorders are associated with changes in neuronal morphology and E/I imbalance, but fewer studies have asked how nonlinear dendritic input summation and dendritic E/I imbalance may contribute to epilepsy and learning deficits. (6/11)
Serendipitously, a family member of a child with GNB1 encephalopathy halfway around the world initiated fundraising, and a group at Columbia worked with JAX to make 3 mouse lines with different variants of the GNB1 gene that cause the disorder in humans, including my daughter's I80T variant. (3/11)
Excited to speak at the #EMBOdendrites conference next week on "Biologically-plausible supervised learning by dendritic gating of plasticity"
I asked Google to read my latest manuscript and generate a striking illustration that captures the themes and concepts to use as cover art for the journal, only to realize they don't allow AI-generated images. Cool looking though.
In 10 weeks, 12 undergraduates from all around the country completed a simulation of the excitement, rigor, and social bonding experience of #neuroscience grad school @rwjms.bsky.social . Their final research presentations were incredible! I'm so proud! #neuroSURP
Excited for my student Sam Gritz to present his poster, "Spatially tuned inhibition is not required to explain place field properties in models with NMDARs" at the Inhibition in the CNS #GRC. Then my talk Wed, "Cellular and subcellular specialization enable biology constrained deep learning." 🧠💻
We found that dendritic target propagation is compatible with multiple experimentally- and theoretically-supported synaptic plasticity rules, including BCM, Temporally Contrastive Hebbian learning, and BTSP! (13/15)
Interestingly, the dendritic target propagation algorithm performs better with Hebbian plasticity in dendrite-targeting interneurons, making a strong experimentally testable prediction that dendritic inhibition should adapt during learning. (12/15)
It works by locally computing error in excitatory neuron dendrites as the difference between top-down excitation and lateral inhibition. Unexpected supervisory input results in dendritic calcium spikes and plasticity in the right neurons in the right layers! (11/15)
We designed an algorithm called “dendritic target propagation” that perform comparably to backprop, and outperforms unsupervised Hebbian learning on the MNIST handwritten digit classification task. (10/15)
Synaptic weights in standard ANNs are trained with an algorithm called “backpropagation of error.” Can the brain approximate gradient descent with cellular and subcellular specialization? (9/15)
So, to explore the implications of BTSP for top-down modulation of learning in the brain, we need to build multi-layer artificial neural networks that have dendrites and dendrite-targeting inhibitory neurons! We call these “dendritic EIANNs”. (6/15)
New #NeuroAI #compneurosky preprint! To better understand how target-directed learning works in the brain, we sought to engineer an artificial neural network capable of solving complex image classification tasks that comprises only experimentally-supported biological building blocks. (1/15)
I stand with science. No ceding global leadership in technology and medicine to China or Russia. Cures for our kids. Treatments for our vulnerable and first responders. Sharing the joy of discovery with our students and trainees. Contributing to the development of civil society. Democracy now.
Ohhhhh! It finally clicked for me. THAT's why they're pushing policy illegally without waiting for Congress. Because they know Congress moves too slowly and April 1 is rapidly approaching. They won't have Congress in a bag much longer.
I think the point is it isn't taught in detail or tested on exams. It does strike me that "learning by observation" is understudied in neuroscience. Also, a small subset of neuroscientists know what "blocking" is: