No subject

[Shawn Lockery]

			POSTDOCTORAL POSITION
		      INSTITUTE OF NEUROSCIENCE
			UNIVERSITY OF OREGON

I am looking for an electrophysiologist experienced in intracellular
and voltage-clamp recording with an interest in distributed processing
and network modeling.  Projects include identification of
interneurons, measurement of synaptic transfer functions, measurement
of parameters for compartmental models of identified neurons, and
compartmental and neural network modeling.  Please send letter and CV
via email.

Shawn R. Lockery

Present address:
	CNL
	Salk Institute 	
	Box 85800
	San Diego, CA 92186-5800
	shawn at helmholtz.sdsc.edu
	fax: (619) 587-0417


GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE RESEARCH INTERESTS

Research in the Lockery lab investigates the distributed processing of
sensory information in well-defined invertebrate networks.
Distributed representations occur in a great many neural systems, but
how they are integrated in the production of behavior is poorly
understood.  This problem is addressed by analyzing the neural basis
of behavior and learning in two relatively simple distributed
processing behaviors: the local bending reflex of the leech and the
chemotactic response of the nematode C.  elegans.  Composed of a small
number of repeatably identifiable sensory, motor, and interneurons,
the local bending reflex computes a sensory-motor input-output
function using a population of interneurons each with many sensory
inputs and motor outputs.  Lockery and co-workers record this
input-output function intracellularly and use the recordings as input
to neural network training algorithms such as backpropagation to
adjust synaptic connections in models of the reflex.  The models
predict as-yet-undiscovered interneurons and possible sites of
synaptic plasticity underlying nonassociative conditioning.  These
predictions are tested in physiological experiments to measure the
connections of identified interneurons in normal and conditioned
animals.  Previous anatomical studies have described the complete
wiring diagram of the nervous system of C. elegans.  The anatomy shows
that interneurons receive input from several chemosensory neurons with
differing chemical sensitivities and have outputs to many different
motor neurons.  To understand how the network controlling chemotaxis
operates, we train models of the anatomically defined circuitry to
reproduce observed chemotactic behavior.  The models are constrained
by parameters that can be measured physiologically and predict the
results of experiments in which particular neurons are ablated in the
behaving animal.