Description:

The Department of Neuroscience Welcomes Dr. Arianna Maffei

Arianna Maffei graduated in Biology from the University of Pavia (Italy) in 1997 and received a Ph.D. in Physiology from the University of Pavia in 2001. She was a postdoctoral scholar at Brandeis University from 2002 to 2008. In 2008, she joined the faculty of the Department of Neurobiology & Behavior at Stony Brook and became Associate Professor in 2014

The release of ‘neuromodulatory’ signaling molecules – such as acetylcholine, serotonin, and norepinephrine - is ubiquitous across neural circuits in all species. In working to understand the role(s) that these molecules play, it has been common to ask what each molecule ‘does’, resulting in a narrative in which modulatory molecules serve as biological proxies for cognitive or computational concepts such as ‘surprise’, ‘arousal’, ‘attention’, and ‘uncertainty’. Using acetylcholine as an example, I describe a series of experiments – some complete, some in progress - designed to understand whether and how one might bridge the enormous gap from molecule to cognition/computation, in rhesus monkeys; a highly translationally-relevant species. Acetylcholine has been implicated in various cognitive processes; I will focus on ‘attention’, using altered processing of sensory data in the primary visual cortex as a model.