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ACSÁDY, László

Head of Lab. of Thalamus Research, Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

László Acsády

 

 

 

 

 

Personal Details

Date of birth:	29th July 1966
Place of birth:	Budapest, Hungary
Nationality:	Hungarian
First Degree:	Master of Sciences in Biology, 1991, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
Graduating Thesis:	Selective innervation of hippocampal interneurons by serotonergic axons
Second Degree:	Ph.D. in Anatomy, 1996, Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest, Hungary
Ph.D Thesis:	The synaptic connectivity and subcortical afferentation of hippocampal interneurons.
Third Degree:	Doctor Sciences (DSc) Hungarian Academy of Sciences

1988-1990	Student Research Assistant, 1st  Dep.of Anatomy, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary.
1990	Junior Research Associate, Department of Neurology, University of Kuopio, Finland (2 months)
1990-1991	Student Research Assistant, Dep. of Functional Neuroanatomy, Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest.
1991-1996	Ph.D. Student, Dep.of Functional Neuroanatomy, Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest.
1996-1997	Postdoctoral research fellow, Center for Molecular and Behavioural Neuroscience, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ USA
1997-2002	Senior research fellow,  Department of Functional Neuroanatomy, Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest.
2003-2008	Wellcome Trust International Senior Research Fellow, Head of Laboratory of Thalamus Research, Department of Cellular and Network Neurobiology, Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest
2009-	Principal Investigator, Head of Laboratory of Thalamus Resaerch Institute of Experimental Medicine

1998-2008	European Journal of Neuroscience Deputy Section Editor
2008-	European Journal of Neuroscience Associate Editor
2008-	Journal of Neuroscience Methods – Editorial Board Member
2008-	Frontiers in Neuroscience – Editorial Board
2009-	Frontiers in Neuroscience Methods –Associate Editor
2009-	Journal of Neuoroscience – Associate Editor

2007-2010	Hungarian Scientific Research Fund – review panel member
2008-	Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Neurobiology Comette - member
2008-	Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Scientific Advidsory Board
2009-	FENS – Program commette member
2009-	Hungarian Neuroscience Society – Executive Committee Member
2010-	Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Member of The General Assembly
2010-	Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Member of the Nomination Commettee
2010-	Federation of Neuroscience Society - School Committee Member
2011	Hungarian Scientific Reseach Fund – Head of the Neuroscience Panel

Scientometric data
Peer reviewed paper: 41
Cumulative impact factor: 200.4
Number of citations: 2264
Hirsch index: 23

 

ABSTRACT

11:00-13:00 18 NOVEMBER
THEMATIC SESSION II Hungarian Academy of Sciences: “Networks”

Network activity of mutually interconnected excitatory and inhibitory neurons.
All brain functions are performed by interconnected networks of excitatory and inhibitory nerve cells.  A critical feature of these cell assemblies is the emergence of transient, spatially and temporally well-organized network activity in various scales. Deciphering the generation, maintenance and termination of these transient population events holds the key to understand neuronal activity underlying various brain functions. The emergent properties of neuronal ensembles can be examined by recording simultaneously the activity of mutually interconnected excitatory and inhibitory neurons. This imposes a major challenge in neuroscience since almost all neuronal systems in our brain contains a mixed population of excitatory and inhibitory neurons with highly divergent connections. In this lecture, I propose a novel way to study interconnected network of excitatory and inhibitory cells and describe the first results about their activity during a well-known transient brain population event, the spindle activity.
Recordings were made in the thalamus, which is the major gateway of the information transfer between the environment and the cerebral cortex, the highest center of information processing in the brain. The advantage of thalamus, relative to other brain regions, is that excitatory and inhibitory cells are 1) spatially segregated and 2) mutually interconnected in a topographic manner. In these studies, we developed a method to simultaneously record the activity of multiple excitatory thalamic neurons (ETN) together with the axonal activity of inhibitory thalamic neurons (ITN) in the same brain volume.  Since ETNs receive inputs from the same population of ITNs they innervate, this ensures that we record mutually interconnected ETNs and ITNs. The neuronal activity was characterized during sleep spindles. Spindles are 1-2 sec. long,  8-15 Hz waxing and waning oscillations during the early phases of sleep in all mammalian brains studied so far, including humans. Spindles are generated in the thalamus and consist of 4-15 cylces during which ETNs and ITNs transiently interact.  Our data shows that the initial level of ETN and ITN activity at the beginning of a spindle event shows strong correlations with the number of cycles i.e. the length of the oscillation. Regardless of spindle length the termination of spindle activity is preceded by a large drop of ITN activity several cycles before the end of the spindle event. 
We conclude that the initial state of the network may critically affect the unfolding population event and that the level of inhibitory activity has major impact on the termination of the oscillation. Our data yield novel insight in the organization of neuronal ensemble activity consisting  of excitatory and inhibitory cells, provide basic, experimental data for computational neuroscience and will allows the investigation of the pathomechanisms underlying aberrant thalamocortical oscillations which characterizes all major neurological diseases.