Patrick Kanold, Ph.D.
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Specialization: Function, assembly, and plasticity of neuronal circuits
Contact
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
733 N. Broadway Avenue, MRB 379
Baltimore, MD 21205
pkanold@jhu.edu
More Info
Brains are uniquely adapted to solve quintessential survival problems that face an individual in its daily life. Thus, our brains must both accurately represent (encode) stimuli in the outside world and use that representation to generate appropriate behavioral actions. The sensory representation of the environment is established during early development and is further shaped by early life experience. Therefore, our research focuses on understanding how our experience of and interaction with the world shapes our brains and thus who we are.
Since the human brain is a very complex neuronal circuit, we are investigating key questions on a circuit level: how does this circuit work, how does it wire up during development, and how is our experience of the world shaping this process?
To begin to answer these questions we investigate the circuits present in the developing and adult brain, their function, and their influence of brain development and plasticity. One focus is on probing circuit function using in vivo 2-photon imaging and holography in behaving animals the other is on detailed in vitro circuit mapping. We are particularly interested in circuits that underlie the formation of the functional architecture of the sensory cortex and circuits underlying plasticity in both the neonatal and adult brain.