Abhishek Banerjee

Biography

Abhi studied Biochemistry and did a DPhil in Physiology/Neuroscience at the University of Oxford as a Felix Scholar in the laboratory of Professor Ole Paulsen. In his DPhil thesis, he studied spike timing-dependent learning rules and the roles of presynaptic NMDA receptors in cortical development and plasticity. During his postdoctoral training, he continued focusing on studying cellular mechanisms underlying cortical plasticity as a Simons Foundation Fellow at MIT with Professor Mriganka Sur. He investigated circuit mechanisms of inhibitory dysfunctions in Rett syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder in the autism spectrum, and revealed altered functional mechanisms (inhibitory gain control, E/I imbalance, delayed developmental Cl- dynamics) underlying the disorder. His work also proposed mechanistic rescue of these deficits upon human IGF1 (Trofinetide; the only drug approved by the FDA for Rett Syndrome) treatment in preclinical animal models. During his time at MIT, he was also an Instructor at the Department of Biology and a Teaching Fellow in Neurobiology at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University. He was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow and NARSAD Young Investigator to work with Professor Fritjof Helmchen at the University of Zürich, where he developed assays to study flexibility of learning and plasticity involving prefrontal-sensory interactions. After a brief stint at Newcastle University as an Associate Professor, Abhi joined the Department of Pharmacology at Oxford and Barts and the London Queen Mary as a Professor of Neuroscience. He is also an affiliate at the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford and the Institute of Neuroinformatics, ETH-Zürich. His research is supported by a Wellcome Trust Career Development Award and a FENS-Kavli Scholar Award.  

Research: Adaptive Learning in the Brain 

How do we learn new tasks in our everyday life? If you know how to play tennis, what happens when you move to Oxford and start playing, say, squash for the first time? How does our brain understand and accommodate new sensorimotor actions (e.g., serve) as well as new ‘rules of the game’ (e.g., strategies to win a point)? Understanding how the brain learns a new cognitive task that allows our behaviour to be flexible is a profoundly intricate challenge. This is partly due to decentralised neural computation in the brain. Learning dynamics shape the properties of microscopic structures in individual neurons and how populations of similar or different types of neurons in different brain areas interact at the mesoscale to influence new learning and decision-making. We are captivated by the complexity of such questions.

The research in our Adaptive Decisions Lab entails a combination of parametric behavioural tasks, novel neurotechnology (viral methods, optogenetics, CRISPR-Cas9), and multi-area imaging methods to reveal the dynamics of micro-and mesoscopic circuits during flexible behaviour. This effort promises substantial new insight into how dysfunction in mechanisms at either spatial scale leads to pathophysiology in autism spectrum disorders. We also merge the field of AI and neuroscience to implement new machine learning algorithms to decipher and better interpret how cognitive variables reorganise during learning. Finally, we are developing analogous cognitive tasks in humans with EEG and fMRI measurements to probe conserved circuit-specific computations in the brain. Our work is at the forefront of dimensional psychiatry, offering a promising cross-species neurobiological and computational footing to understand brain disorders.