Staff Profile
Dr Abhishek Banerjee
Senior Lecturer
- Email: abhi.banerjee@ncl.ac.uk
- Telephone: +44 191 2085227
- Personal Website: https://www.adaptive-decisions.com/
- Address: Adaptive Decision-making Lab
Henry Wellcome Building HW.268
Biosciences Institute
Newcastle University NE2 4HH
United Kingdom
Background
Welcome to Abhishek Banerjee's Homepage. Abhi is a new Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University and the Head of Adaptive Decision-making Lab at the Biosciences Institute.
Abhi is happy to discuss potential project and Ph.D. opportunities and sponsorship for externally-funded postdoctoral fellowships. Please get in touch for informal inquiry using the email address provided.
Brief Biography:
Abhi did his D.Phil. at University of Oxford as a Felix Scholar studying spike timing-dependent plasticity learning rules during cortical development. He was a Simons Fellow at MIT studying the dynamics of inhibitory mechanisms in Rett syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder in the autism spectrum. During this time, he was also a Teaching Fellow in Neurobiology at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University. He was then a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow and NARSAD Young Investigator at University of Zürich.
Research Themes:
- Development and plasticity of the nervous system
- Neural circuits underlying adaptive decision-making
- Dysfunctions of neural circuits in neurodevelopmental disorders
Further details on our work can be found below:
Homepage, Google Scholar, or Twitter
Research
Research Interests:
The research interests of the Adaptive Decision-making lab are to investigate synaptic, cellular, and circuit mechanisms that contribute to brain development and plasticity and how such mechanisms contribute to complex behaviour. This research is important for improving basic understanding of neural circuit function and also to identify novel therapeutic targets and strategies for treating dysfunctions in neurological disorders especially neurodevelopmental disorders.
Towards this end, we employ high-resolution two-photon calcium imaging, in vivo and in vitro electrophysiology, combined with opto- and pharmacogenetic manipulations and molecular perturbations like genome-editing (CRISPR-Cas9) in awake behaving mice.
Research Keywords:
Autism Spectrum Disorders, Neural circuits, Flexible Decision-making, Development, Synaptic Plasticity, In vivo imaging, In vitro electrophysiology, Mini-scope, Optogenetics, Genome editing, CRISPR-Cas9
Current Projects:
Neural dynamics of flexible decision-making in the orbitofrontal cortex
Emerging algorithms in reinforcement learning
Excitation/inhibition balance and dysfunctions in Rett syndrome
Molecular signaling pathways and therapeutics in neurodevelopmental disorders
Collaborators:
Professor Walter Senn, University of Bern, Switzerland
Professor Fritjof Helmchen, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Dr Valerio Zerbi. ETH-Zurich, SwitzerlandDr Bice Chini, CNR Milan, Italy
Teaching
Current Teaching:
BMS2011: Neuroscience: from cell to cognition - Newcastle University
MMB8019: Sensory Neuroscience–Newcastle University
MMB8010: The Biological Basis of Psychiatric Illness - Newcastle University
Previous Teaching:
Teaching Fellow, Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology, Harvard University - ‘Building Blocks of Neural Networks: Synapses and Circuits in Health and Neuropsychiatric Disease’, Neurobiology 101hfl Advanced Undergraduate Course in Life Sciences, Fall 2014 - Spring 2015.
Instructor, Department of Biology, MIT - Course 7.346 ‘Fine tuning the Synapse: Functions and Dysfunction’, Fall 2014.
Visiting Lecturer, Synapse, Circuits and Behavior Course, Universidade de Coimbra, 2017-2019
Guest Lecturer, Bachelor in Humanmedizin programme, ETH-Zürich, 2017-2018
Visiting Professor, MD. Ph.D. course Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 2017-2018
Postgraduate Supervision:
Jasper Teutsch, Ph.D. student in Newcastle University (January 2020-till now)
Anastasia Dimitrou, Ph.D. in Neuroscience in Newcastle University (October 2020-till now)
David Haydock, M.Sc. in Computational Neuroscience and Neuroinformatics in Newcastle University (March 2020-till now)
Previously, supervision of research projects for the Postdoc/Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Neuroscience students at Oxford University (Hilary-Trinity Term, 2009), MIT and ETH/University of Zürich (2015-2019)
Anastasia Dimitrou, M.Res. in Neuroscience in Newcastle University (February 2020-August 2020)
Publications
- Banerjee A, Parente G, Teutsch J, Lewis C, Voigt F, Helmchen F. Value-guided remapping of sensory cortex by lateral orbitofrontal cortex. Nature 2020, 585, 245-250.
- Banerjee A, Miller MT, Li K, Sur M, Kaufmann WE. Towards a better diagnosis and treatment of Rett syndrome: a model synaptic disorder. Brain 2019, 142(2), 239-248.
- Feldman D, Banerjee A, Sur M. Developmental Dynamics of Rett Syndrome. Neural Plasticity 2016, 2016, 6154080.
- Banerjee A, Rikhye RV, Breton-Provencher V, Tang X, Li C, Li K, Runyan CA, Fu Z, Jaenisch R, Sur M. Jointly reduced inhibition and excitation underlies circuit-wide changes in cortical processing in Rett syndrome. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2016, 113(46), E7287-E7296.
- Banerjee A, Larsen RS, Philpot BD, Paulsen O. Roles of Presynaptic NMDA Receptors in Neurotransmission and Plasticity. Trends in Neurosciences 2016, 39(1), 26-39.
- Swiech L, Heidenreich M, Banerjee A, Habib N, Li Y, Trombetta J, Sur M, Zhang F. In vivo interrogation of gene function in the mammalian brain using CRISPR-Cas9. Nature Biotechnology 2015, 33(1), 102-106.
- Banerjee A, Gonzalez-Rueda A, Sampaio-Baptista C, Paulsen O, Rodriguez-Moreno A. Distinct mechanisms of spike timing-dependent LTD at vertical and horizontal inputs onto L2/3 pyramidal neurons in mouse barrel cortex. Physiological Reports 2014, 2(3), e00271.
- Castro J, Garcia RI, Kwok S, Banerjee A, Petravicz J, Woodson J, Mellios N, Tropea D, Sur M. Functional recovery with recombinant human IGF1 treatment in a mouse model of Rett Syndrome. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2014, 111(27), 9941-9946.
- Scholl B, Banerjee A. Synaptic correlates of binocular convergence: Just a coincidence?. Journal of Neuroscience 2014, 34(27), 8931-8933.
- Rodríguez-Moreno A, Banerjee A, González-Rueda A, Upton AL, Craig MT, Paulsen O. Presynaptic self-depression at developing neocortical synapses. Neuron 2013, 1, 35-42. In Preparation.
- Rodriguez Moreno A, Banerjee A, Paulsen O. Presynaptic NMDA receptors and spike timing-dependent long-term depression at cortical synapses. Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience 2010, 2:18. In Preparation.
- Banerjee A, Meredith RM, Rodríguez-Moreno A, Mierau SB, Auberson YP, Paulsen O. Double Dissociation of Spike Timing-Dependent Potentiation and Depression by Subunit-Preferring NMDA Receptor Antagonists in Mouse Barrel Cortex. Cerebral Cortex 2009, 19, 2959-2969. In Preparation.
- Banerjee A, Ellender TJ. Oscillations in the developing cortex: a mechanism for establishing and synchronizing an early network?. Journal of Neuroscience 2009, 29, 15029-15030. In Preparation.