Carmen Varela
The lab's ongoing research in rodents focuses on several key areas related to their overall goal of understanding how thalamic circuits contribute to learning:
- Sleep Spindle Cell Dynamics: Investigating the cellular mechanisms of sleep spindles that promote memory consolidation and cognitive flexibility.
- Thalamocortical Interactions: Studying the role of coordinated activity in the thalamus and functionally connected regions, such as the hippocampus and neocortex, in promoting memory consolidation.
- Closed-Loop Regulation of Sleep Oscillations: Developing innovative methods for closed-loop regulation of sleep oscillations to enhance cognitive function.
- Thalamic Activity and Sleep Stability: Exploring the relationship between thalamic activity, sleep stability and microarchitecture.
- Deviance Detection Mechanisms: Investigating how thalamic activity contributes to detecting unexpected events or sensory stimuli in the environment, a fundamental process for updating cortical predictive models.
The Varela Lab is grateful for the generous support from several leading funding agencies, including the Whitehall Foundation, the Alzheimer’s Association, and the National Institute of Mental Health.
The Varela Lab aims to elucidate the mechanisms (cellular, network, computational) by which thalamic cells and networks contribute to learning and memory. A primary goal is to shed light on the spike and local field potential dynamics that facilitate learning and memory across the sleep-wake cycle. One of their general hypotheses is that thalamic networks allow mammals to learn and update the internal mental models of the world that are the foundation of adaptive behavior.