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Terrence J. Sejnowski

Professor and Laboratory Head
Computational Neurobiology Laboratory

Terrence J. Sejnowski, professor and head of the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, is a pioneer in the field of computational neuroscience.

Among other things, Sejnowski is interested in the hippocampus, believed to play a major role in learning and memory; and the cerebral cortex, which holds our knowledge of the world and how to interact with it. In his lab, Sejnowski's team uses sophisticated electrical and chemical monitoring techniques to measure changes that occur in the connections among nerve cells in the hippocampus during a simple form of learning. They use the results of these studies to instruct large-scale computers to mimic how these nerve cells work. By studying how the resulting computer simulations can perform operations that resemble the activities of the hippocampus, Sejnowski hopes to gain new knowledge of how the human brain is capable of learning and storing memories. This knowledge ultimately may provide medical specialists with critical clues to combating Alzheimer's disease and other disorders that rob people of the critical ability to remember faces, names, places and events.

Education

B.S., Physics, Case Western Reserve University
Ph.D., Physics, Princeton University
Postdoctoral fellow, Biology, Princeton; Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School

Awards and Honors

Presidential Young Investigator Award, 1984-89
Fairchild Distinguished Scholar, 1992-93
Wright Prize, 1996
Hebb Prize, 1999
IEEE Fellow, 2000
Neural Network Pioneer Award, 2002
Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars, 2003
Francis Crick Chair funded by the J.W. Kieckhefer Foundation, 2004
American Association Advancement of Science Fellow, 2006

Selected Publications

Laughlin, S. B., and Sejnowski, T. J., Communication in neuronal networks, Science 301, 1870-1874 (2003).
Fellous, J.-M., Tiesinga, P. H.E., Thomas, P. J., and Sejnowski, T. J., Discovering spike patterns in neuronal responses, Journal of Neuroscience 24(12), 2989-3001 (2004).
Eagleman, D. M., Jacobson, J. E., and Sejnowski, T. J., Perceived luminance depends on temporal context, Nature 428, 854-856 (2004).
Houweling, A. R., Bazhenov, M., Timofeev, I., Steriade, M., and Sejnowski, T. J., Homeostatic synaptic plasticity can explain post-traumatic epileptogenesis in chronically isolated neocortex, Cerebral Cortex, 15, 834-845 (2005).
Coggan, J. S., Bartol, T. M., Esquenazi, E., Stiles, J. R., Lamont, S., Martone, M. E., Berg, D. K., Ellisman, M. H., and Sejnowski, T. J., Evidence for ectopic neurotransmission at a neuronal synapse, Science, 39, 446-451 (2005).
Prescott, A.P., Ratte, S., De Koninck, Y., and Sejnowski, T. J., Nonlinear interaction between shunting and adaptation controls a switch between integration and coincidence detection in pyramidal neurons, Journal of Neuroscience 26, 9084-9097 (2006).

Salk News Releases

Salk Researcher Terry Sejnowski Elected to Institute of Medicine, October 14, 2008
Salk scientists named 2006 AAAS Fellows, November 29, 2006
Salk scientists overturn a dogma of nerve cell communication, July 14, 2005
New Light on How the Brain Handles Brightness, June 23, 2004
Salk Researcher Provides New View on How the Brain Functions, September 25, 2003
New Book Reveals Complexities Of The Human Mind, November 18, 2002
New View of Brain's Inner Workings Opens Research Into Autism, Other Disorders, January 24, 2002
We Live In The Past, Salk Scientists Discover, March 16, 2000
Computer Program Trained To Read Faces Developed By Salk Team, March 17, 1999

Faculty & Research