Anastacia Anishchenko, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley Department of Molecular and Cell Biology 142 Life Sciences Addition # 3200 Berkeley, CA 94720 USA anastacia [at] berkeley [dot] edu

I am a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Feller Lab, which has recently moved from UC San Diego to UC Berkeley. In collaboration with Chichilnisky Lab at the Salk Institute, I study correlated neural activity in the retina and its role in the development of visual circuits [1]-[4]. We perform electrophysiological recordings using a multi-electrode array (MEA) -- a planar array of 64 to 512 extracellular electrodes. The MEA allows us to record both spontaneous and light-evoked activity of dozens of retinal cells at the same time. Being able to monitor so many cells simultaneously opens unique possibilities for getting insights into the retinal circuitry.

How did I get here? Well, I have been always fascinated by what I think are the two greatest mysteries: the Universe and the Brain. First, I thought I would focus on the Universe, and so I received a degree in Theoretical Physics from the Belarusian State University in Minsk, Belarus. However, when I came as a graduate student to Brown University in Providence, RI, my interest shifted to the Brain.* For a few years, I had been working under the supervision of Elie Bienenstock and building computational models of visual object recognition in cortex [6]. I also visited SISSA in Trieste, Italy to study the models of associative memory in small-world networks of neurons with Alessandro Treves [5]. By the time I was finishing my Ph.D. thesis, I had realized that a purely theoretical approach to unveiling the mysteries of the Brain is not enough for me. So I received an intensive training in electrophysiology at the Neural Systems and Behavior course in Woods Hole, MA, and then joined the laboratory of Marla Feller as a postdoc... Well, the rest you already know.