Upcoming ION Seminars
Psilocybin is a serotonergic psychedelic with growing interest as a psychiatric therapeutic, yet how it reshapes brain activity and perception at the circuit level remains poorly understood. I will present two complementary studies from head-fixed mouse models that combine large-scale electrophysiology with behavior to address this question. The first study characterizes how a single dose of psilocybin alters firing rates, local field potentials, EEG oscillations, and burst dynamics across cortical (prefrontal, sensory), hippocampal, and thalamic regions, comparing psilocybin to saline controls and to a ketanserin pre-treatment group that isolates effects dependent on the 5-HT2A receptor. The second study found that psilocybin collapsed performance in a visual change-detection task to chance level while leaving motor kinematics unperturbed, yet, surprisingly, without impairing visual coding itself. Instead, psilocybin biased visual cortex toward sensory surprise by aberrantly recruiting change-encoding neurons even when no change occurred, an effect linked to a prominent 4-Hz oscillation strongest in somatostatin-expressing (SST) interneurons. Together, these studies link psilocybin's receptor pharmacology to circuit-level dynamics and their behavioral/perceptual consequences.
Seminar Details
This academic year will host a series of virtual and in person seminars with live, remote access via Zoom. ION Seminars are open to the University of Oregon community and in person attendance is welcome. In person seminars will be held in Willamette 110 at 4 PM PT.
To accommodate remote speakers and time differences, some seminars may be offered at Noon PT or another agreed upon time. For students taking BI 407/507 Neuroscience Seminar please contact the course instructor to access recordings as needed.
Details for upcoming seminars will be shared here on the ION website as well as through our ION mailing lists. Links for remote access via Zoom will be available only through ION Seminar mailing list and those not on the list can request access by contacting Jenna Penny with their uoregon.edu email address.