Annual Kaulenas Lecture: Specific Connections in the Visual System
Professor Joshua Sanes studies the formation of synapses, the connections that transmit information between nerve cells. Changes in synapses underlie learning and memory, and synaptic defects underlie diverse neurological and psychiatric diseases. Professor Sanes is interested in the mechanisms that regulate the formation of these structures. He and his laboratory colleagues initially used the neuromuscular synapse, which connects the spinal cord to muscles, because it was experimentally more accessible than synapses in the brain. Using this preparation, they identified key molecules that promote synapse formation. More recently, they have extended this work to the brain itself, focusing on how the specific connections form that underlie processing of visual information. To better understand these processes, they have also pioneered new ways to image synapses as they form and are engaged in generating novel transgenic strains that make it possible to visualize neurons and their connections in developing and adult animals, and in animal models of neurological and psychiatric disease.
Dr. Sanes received a B.A. from Yale, where he was Scholar of the House. He earned a PhD in Neurobiology from Harvard in 1976. Following postdoctoral work at UCSF, he joined the faculty of Washington University, where he served on the faculty for over 20 years and held an Endowed Chair of Neurobiology. He returned to Harvard in 2004 as Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and founding Director of the Center for Brain Science. He has served on the National Advisory Council of the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke (NIH), the Council of the Society for Neuroscience, and advisory panels for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Association, the Klingenstein Neuroscience Fund, the Searle Scholars Fund, the Stowers Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, recipient of the Alden Spencer Award of Columbia University, and a member of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences and The U.S. National Academy of Sciences.