Neuronal Calcium Signaling
 
 
Description:  Calcium, the most important of the second messengers, regulates the synaptic plasticity that is underlies our ability to learn. Calcium enters cells through single-protein channels in the cells' outer membrane. We exploit the ability to dynamically monitor cytosolic calcium, throughout `intact' cells, with sub-millisecond temporal resolution and sub-micron spatial resolution in the construction of a map of channel density. This map dictates how the cell `compartmentalizes' calcium and so offers insight into how it processes its synaptic input.
In this talk we will provide an overview of neuronal calcium signaling and pose and solve two inverse problems for semilinear parabolic systems:
(1) Infer from the change in buffered cytosolic calcium fluorescence the associated membrane calcium current in space and time, and
(2) Infer from the calcium current the nonuniform distribution of calcium channels. We apply our findings to a nonuniform Morris-Lecar fiber.

Professor Cox received his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1988 from Renssselaer Polytechnic Institute. He spent one year at the Courant Institute before joining the Rice faculty in 1989. He has held visiting positions in Madrid, Cologne and Nancy and is on leave this year at the Neuroscience Department at Baylor College of Medicine.


Area(s):
Start Date:  2006-04-04
Start Time:   15:00
Speaker:  Steve Cox (Computational and Applied Math., Rice University)
Place:  Sala 2.4 - Departamento de Matemática
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© Centre for Mathematics, University of Coimbra, funded by
Science and Technology Foundation
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