The group of Alex Roxin https://sites.google.com/site/alexanderroxin/home at the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica https://www.crm.cat/_neuroscience/ is looking for a postdoctoral researcher to work on models of the formation and long-term dynamics of memories in the Hippocampus. This project is a collaboration with the Wang lab at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience https://mpfi.org/science/our-labs/wang-lab/ in the framework of the CRCNS program, to study the role of acetylcholine in memory formation.
The postdoctoral candidate should have strong quantitative skills. The theoretical side of the project will involve data analysis, modelling, and analytical and numerical analysis of the model. Yearly meetings between the two groups will be held in Barcelona and Florida. The postdoctoral researcher will be expected to spend a brief period of time, dates and duration to be determined, at the Wang Lab in Florida. The project officially ends in November 2026 and hence the position can be for a maximum of three years, although this depends on the start date. Interested and highly motivated applicants should send a CV, cover letter and up to three letters of recommendation to Alex Roxin at aro...@crm.cat. Please specify your availability for the start date in the application. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. *Project Summary:* * Nearly a century of clinical and experimental work has shown the hippocampus to be crucial for enabling us to find our way around an environment (spatial memory) and remembering events that occur in our lives (episodic memory). Yet, the neuronal mechanisms underlying the formation and retention of these memories remain largely unknown. The hippocampus receives various neuromodulatory inputs. Among them, cholinergic inputs are critical for forming new memories and regulating memory stability. Cholinergic innervation of the hippocampus progressively degenerates in patients with Alzheimers disease, and the neuronal response to acetylcholine weakens with aging. Thus, addressing how cholinergic activity mediates changes at the cellular, circuit, and behavior levels as memory forms and stabilizes is key to understanding mnemonic processing in health and disease. Ample in vitro evidence suggests muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAChRs) modulate synaptic plasticity -- the molecular correlate of learning and memory. However, in vivo evidence for the role of mAChRs in shaping neuronal dynamics during learning remains scarce. In the hippocampal CA1* *region, mAChRs are expressed in multiple cell types and cellular compartments, making it difficult to decipher the contribution of individual elements to the overall network effects of acetylcholine. In CA1 pyramidal neurons, mAChRs are densely clustered at the proximal dendrites, co-localized with the CA3 inputs that convey information about the stored memory. These receptors are ideally situated to modulate pyramidal neurons response to CA3* *inputs and to shape neuronal dynamics through synaptic plasticity. In this project, we hypothesize that mAChRs located on CA1 pyramidal neurons mediate both the formation and stability of the memory-related dynamical activity patterns generated by these neurons. To test this hypothesis, we combine theoretical modeling with in vivo experiments that leverage* *newly developed neuropharmacological tools to target muscarinic acetylcholine receptors with cell-type specificity. Our objective is to elucidate the cholinergic control of plasticity over two distinct stages of the memory process memory formation and stability across multiple levels from cell-typespecific acetylcholine receptors to the development of memory-related neuronal dynamics, and finally to the refinement of behavior.* -- Alex Roxin Computational Neuroscience Group Centre de Recerca Matemàtica Campus de Bellaterra, Edifici C 08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona) https://sites.google.com/site/alexanderroxin/home
