Neuronal processing of visual information. Professor Nathalie Rochefort Professor of Neuroscience Hugh Robson Building 15 George Square Edinburgh, EH8 9XD Contact details Work: + 44 131 650 3552 Email: n.rochefort@ed.ac.uk Web: Rochefort Lab Twitter @RochefortLab Personal Profile 2022 - present: Professor, University of Edinburgh 2014 - 2021: Sir Henry Dale fellow, funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society 2013 - 2022: Chancellor’s fellow, University of Edinburgh 2007 - 2012: Post-doctoral research fellow, Institute of Neuroscience, Technical University Munich, Germany 2002 - 2007: Ph.D., Laboratory of Neurophysiology, Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany and Laboratory of Physiologie de la Perception et de l’Action, CNRS/Collège-de-France, Paris, France 2002: Master in Neuroscience, University Paris VI 2000: Master in Epistemology, University Paris VII 2000: BS Biology-Biochemistry, University Paris VI, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris Research Theme Synapses, Circuits and Behaviour Research Our aim is to reveal how neuronal networks integrate sensory information in a way that is relevant for the animal’s behaviour. We are using the mouse primary visual cortex as a model system of cortical integration of sensory and non-sensory information. Neurons in the primary visual cortex respond to specific features of visual stimuli such as their location, their orientation and their direction of movement. These visual responses do not only depend on the characteristics of the stimuli but are also strongly modulated by the context in which they are perceived, such as the animal’s behavioural state and its previous experience associated with these stimuli. By using two-photon calcium imaging combined with electrophysiological recordings in awake behaving mice, our current projects investigate: - How visually-guided behaviour modulates neuronal activity in the primary visual cortex - How individual pyramidal neurons integrate feed-forward visual inputs with top-down contextual inputs. - How cortical information processing relates to energy consumption Using such information, we apply the same combination of methods to study how this network activity is disrupted in the brain of mouse models for autistic spectrum disorders and intellectual disabilities. Funding ERC Consolidator grant BBSRC Research grant Sir Henry Dale fellowship Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain (SIDB) BBSRC Wellcome-UoE Institutional Strategic Support Fund (ISSF) RS MacDonald Marie Curie Career Integration Grant Marie Curie Intra-European fellowship (Dr Janelle Pakan) Awards 2019: EMBO Young Investigator (YIP) award 2017: The Physiological Society’s 2017 R Jean Banister Prize Lecture 2013: Schilling Research Award of the German Neuroscience Society 2013 2011: Bernard Katz Lecture Award, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation 2006: Research prize from the French national association for the blind and visually-disabled people (FAF) Team members Dr Zahid Padamsey (Postdoctoral fellow; Royal Society commission 1851; BBSRC) Dr Danai Katsanevaki (Postdoctoral fellow) Dr Tom Flossmann (Walter Benjamin post-doctoral fellow; DFG, Germany) Dr Alfredo Llorca Molina (Postdoctoral fellow) Theoklitos Amvrosiadis, (PhD student; MRC Precision medicine DTP) Arthur Zhang (PhD student; MRC Precision medicine DTP) Zihao Chen (PhD student; SIDB) Patricia Maeso Hernandez (Research assistant) Lab alumni Dr Janelle Pakan (Post-doctoral fellow, Marie Curie Fellow), now: PI, Pakan lab, DZNE Magdeburg. Dr Sander Keemink: now Assistant professor, AI department, Donders Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands. Dr Stephen Currie (Postdoctoral fellow), now: Post-doctoral fellow, University of Edinburgh. Dr Christopher Coutts, (Postdoctoral fellow), now: Resident Physician, Neurosurgery, University Hospital Magdeburg, Germany Dr Lukas Fischer (Postdoctoral fellow), now: Post-doctoral associate, MIT, USA Dr Evelyn Dylda (PhD student), now: Postdoctoral fellow, University of Rochester Medical Center, NY, USA Dr Tristan Altwegg-Boussac (Postdoctoral researcher), now: Post-doctoral researcher, ICM, Paris. Dr Scott Lowe (PhD student, research assistant), now: Post-doctoral fellow Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, and Vector Institute, Toronto, Canada Dr Valerio Francioni (PhD student; Postdoctoral fellow), now: Post-doctoral associate, MIT, USA Nathalie Dupuy now Project leader, Biosimulation Scientist at Physiomics plc Collaborations Máté Lengyel (University of Cambridge) Ian Duguid (University of Edinburgh) Tomas Cizmar (Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology) Arno Onken (School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh) Peter Kind and the Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain (SIDB) (University of Edinburgh) Matthias Hennig (School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh) Mark Van Rossum (School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh) Oscar Marin (King’s College London) Publications * Equal contributionn Bryan M. Li, Isabel Maria Cornacchia, Nathalie Rochefort and Arno Onken, V1T: large-scale mouse V1 response prediction using a Vision Transformer, 2023. Transactions on Machine Learning Research, 2835-8856, pdf (openreview.net) Padamsey Z., Katsanevaki D., Dupuy N., Rochefort N.L., 2022. Neocortex saves energy by reducing coding precision during food scarcity, Neuron, S0896-6273(21)00839-4, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2021.10.024 Nina Kudryashova , Theoklitos Amvrosiadis, Nathalie Dupuy, Nathalie Rochefort, Arno Onken, 2022. Parametric Copula-GP model for analyzing multidimensional neuronal and behavioral relationships. PLoS Comput Biol., 18(1):e1009799, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009799 Dacre J, Colligan M, Clarke T, Ammer JJ, Schiemann J, Chamosa-Pino V, Claudi F, Harston J.A., Eleftheriou C., Pakan J.M.P., Huang C.C., Hantman A.W., Rochefort N.L., Duguid I., 2021. A cerebellar-thalamocortical pathway drives behavioral context-dependent movement initiation. Neuron, 21;109(14):2326-2338.e8. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.05.016 Katsanevaki D., Rochefort N.L., 2021. Loss of Inhibition Gives Perspective: Developmental Apoptosis of GABAergic Chandelier Cells Primes Binocular Vision. Neuron, 109(3):398-400, doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.01.010. Flossmann T, Rochefort N.L., 2021. Spatial navigation signals in rodent visual cortex. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, Volume 67, Pages 163-173, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2020.11.004 Padamsey Z., Rochefort N.L., 2020. Defying Expectations: How Neurons Compute Prediction Errors in Visual Cortex. Neuron, Volume 108, Issue 6, Pages 1016-1019, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2020.12.005 Henschke J.*, Dylda E.*, Katsanevaki D.*, Dupuy N., Currie S.P., Amvrosiadis T., Pakan J.M.P.* and Rochefort N.L.*, 2020. Reward association enhances stimulus-specific representations in primary visual cortex, Current Biology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.03.018. Francioni V., Padamsey Z., Rochefort N.L., 2019. High and asymmetric somato-dendritic coupling of V1 layer 5 neurons independent of visual stimulation and locomotion, eLife, 8:e49145; doi: 10.7554/eLife.49145 Sergey Turtaev, Ivo T. Leite, Tristan Altwegg-Boussac, Janelle M. P. Pakan, Nathalie L. Rochefort * & Tomáš Čižmár *, 2018. High-fidelity multimode fibre-based endoscopy for deep brain in vivo imaging, Light: Science & Applications, volume 7, Article number: 92, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-018-0094-x Dylda, E.*, Pakan, J.M.P.* and Rochefort, N.L., 2019. Chronic Two-Photon Calcium Imaging in the Visual Cortex of Awake Behaving Mice (Book Chapter), Handbook of Behavioral Neuroscience, Volume 28, Pages 235-251, Edited by D. Manahan-Vaughan, Elsevier. Pakan J.M.P.*, Currie S.P.*, Fischer L.*, Rochefort N.L., 2018. The Impact of Visual Cues, Reward, and Motor Feedback on the Representation of Behaviorally Relevant Spatial Locations in Primary Visual Cortex. Cell Rep., 24(10):2521-2528. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2018.08.010 Lim L, Pakan JMP, Selten MM, Marques-Smith A, Llorca A, Bae SE, Rochefort NL, Marín O., 2018. Optimization of interneuron function by direct coupling of cell migration and axonal targeting. Nat Neurosci. 21(7):920-931. doi: 10.1038/s41593-018-0162-9. Pakan J.M.P., Francioni V., Rochefort N.L., 2018. Action and learning shape the activity of neuronal circuits in the visual cortex. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2018 Oct;52:88-97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2018.04.020 Keemink, S.W.*, Lowe, S.C.*, Pakan, J.M.P., Dylda, E., van Rossum, M.C.W., Rochefort, N.L., 2018. FISSA: A neuropil decontamination toolbox for calcium imaging signals. Sci. Rep. 8, 3493. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-21640-2 Pakan, J.M.P., Lowe, S.C., Dylda, E., Keemink, S.W., Currie, S.P., Coutts, C.A., Rochefort, N.L., 2016. Behavioral-state modulation of inhibition is context-dependent and cell type specific in mouse visual cortex. Elife 5, e14985. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.14985 Chen, X., Rochefort, N.L., Sakmann, B., Konnerth, A., 2013. Reactivation of the Same Synapses during Spontaneous Up States and Sensory Stimuli. Cell Rep. 4, 31–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2013.05.042 Chen, X., Leischner, U., Varga, Z., Jia, H., Deca, D., Rochefort, N.L., Konnerth, A., 2012. LOTOS-based two-photon calcium imaging of dendritic spines in vivo. Nat. Protoc. 7, 1818–1829. doi:10.1038/nprot.2012.106 Rochefort, N.L., Konnerth, A., 2012. Dendritic spines: from structure to in vivo function. EMBO Rep. 13, 699–708. https://doi.org/10.1038/embor.2012.102 Grienberger, C.*, Rochefort, N.L.*, Adelsberger, H., Henning, H. a, Hill, D.N., Reichwald, J., Staufenbiel, M., Konnerth, A., 2012. Staged decline of neuronal function in vivo in an animal model of Alzheimer’s disease. Nat. Commun. 3, 774. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1783 Rochefort, N.L.*, Narushima, M.*, Grienberger, C., Marandi, N., Hill, D.N., Konnerth, A., 2011. Development of Direction Selectivity in Mouse Cortical Neurons. Neuron 71, 425–432. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2011.06.013 Chen, X.*, Leischner, U.*, Rochefort, N.L., Nelken, I., Konnerth, A., 2011. Functional mapping of single spines in cortical neurons in vivo. Nature 475, 501–505. doi:10.1038/nature10193 Jia, H.*, Rochefort, N.L.*, Chen, X., Konnerth, A., 2011. In vivo two-photon imaging of sensory-evoked dendritic calcium signals in cortical neurons. Nat. Protoc. 6, 28–35. doi:10.1038/nprot.2010.169 Rochefort, N., 2010. Organisation dendritique et caractéristiques fonctionnelles des afférences visuelles sur les neurones corticaux. Médecine/Sciences 26, 1009–1012. https://doi.org/10.1051/medsci/201026121009 Jia, H.*, Rochefort, N.L.*, Chen, X., Konnerth, A., 2010. Dendritic organization of sensory input to cortical neurons in vivo. Nature 464, 1307–1312. doi:10.1038/nature08947 Rochefort N.L., Grienberger C. and Konnerth A., 2010. In vivo two-photon calcium imaging using multicell bolus loading of fluorescent indicators, Imaging in Neuroscience: A Laboratory Manual, R. Yuste, F. Helmchen and A. Konnerth, editors, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, NY, chapter 9. Rochefort, N.L.*, Garaschuk, O.*, Milos, R.-I.*, Narushima, M., Marandi, N., Pichler, B., Kovalchuk, Y., Konnerth, A., 2009. Sparsification of neuronal activity in the visual cortex at eye-opening. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 106, 15049–15054. doi:10.1073/pnas.0907660106 Rochefort, N.L., Buzás, P., Quenech’du, N., Koza, A., Eysel, U.T., Milleret, C., Kisvárday, Z.F., 2009. Functional Selectivity of Interhemispheric Connections in Cat Visual Cortex. Cereb. Cortex 19, 2451–2465. 2009. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhp001 Rochefort, N.L., Jia, H., Konnerth, A., 2008. Calcium imaging in the living brain: prospects for molecular medicine. Trends Mol. Med. 14, 389–399. doi:10.1016/j.molmed.2008.07.005 Rochefort, N.L., Konnerth, A., 2008. Genetically encoded Ca2+ sensors come of age. Nat. Methods 5, 761–762. doi:10.1038/nmeth0908-761 Rochefort, N.L., Buzás, P., Kisvárday, Z.F., Eysel, U.T., Milleret, C., 2007. Layout of transcallosal activity in cat visual cortex revealed by optical imaging. Neuroimage 36, 804–821. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.03.006 Rochefort, N., Quenech’du, N., Ezan, P., Giaume, C., Milleret, C., 2005. Postnatal development of GFAP, connexin43 and connexin30 in cat visual cortex. Dev. Brain Res. 160, 252–264. doi:10.1016/j.devbrainres.2005.09.011 Rochefort, N., Quenech’du, N., Watroba, L., Mallat, M., Giaume, C., Milleret, C., 2002. Microglia and astrocytes may participate in the shaping of visual callosal projections during postnatal development. J. Physiol. Paris 96, 183–92. Information for students: Willingness to discuss research projects with undergraduate and postgraduate students: YES - please click here