Balancing Brain Plasticity/Stability across the Lifespan

This event is Cancelled. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Early life experiences potently shape brain function, when neural circuits exhibit windows of profound plasticity then later stabilize. A cellular/molecular basis for these "critical periods" has begun to emerge: the balance between excitation and inhibition drives onset timing, while molecular ‘brakes’ actively limit rewiring thereafter. Manipulations targeting these processes are so powerful that animals of identical chronological age may be at the peak, prior to, or past their plastic window. Thus, critical period timing per se is plastic. Strikingly, most of these regulators converge in and around pivotal inhibitory circuits which are particularly vulnerable in mental illness. Understanding their maturation and maintenance provides novel therapeutic insight into cognitive disorders and the potential to reopen windows of brain plasticity throughout life – for better or worse.

Biography
Takao K. Hensch, Ph.D., is joint professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School at Boston Children’s Hospital, and professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard’s Center for Brain Science. After undergraduate studies with Dr. J Allan Hobson at Harvard, he was a student of Dr. Masao Ito at the University Tokyo (MPH) and a Fulbright fellow with Dr. Wolf Singer at the Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, before receiving a PhD in neuroscience working with Dr. Michael Stryker at the University of California, San Francisco in 1996. He then helped to launch the RIKEN Brain Science Institute as lab head for neuronal circuit development and served as group director (and now special advisor) before returning to the United States in 2006.Professor Hensch has received several honors, including the Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award in both Japan (2001 Tsukahara Prize) and the United States (2005), as well as an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award (2007). He currently directs the NIMH Silvio O. Conte Center for Basic Mental Health Research at Harvard.