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Michael Gilhooley, M.D., Ph.D.

Faculty Member

Assistant Professor in Residence
Department of Ophthalmology
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles

Personal Statement

My interest in Melanopsin and its fascinating clinical applications (especially as an optogenetic tool for visual restoration) originates from both my previous circadian rhythm research and clinical experience in ophthalmology. Harnessing the relative resistance of melanopsin expressing cells to diseases, such as the hereditary optic neuropathies, has formed another focus of recent research.

Marcus Triplett Headshot

Marcus Triplett, Ph.D.

Faculty Member

Assistant Professor
Department of Neurobiology
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles

Personal Statement

Marcus Triplett is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurobiology at UCLA. His research focuses on computational neuroscience and machine learning, with particular emphasis on high-throughput neural data science, computational/AI tools for mapping neural neural circuits, and mechanistic models of neural computation and cognition. Prior to joining UCLA, Dr. Triplett was a postdoctoral research scientist in the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at Columbia University.

Victoria Ho Headshot

Victoria Ho, M.D., Ph.D.

Faculty Member

Assistant Professor in Residence
Department of Neurology
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles

Personal Statement

My lab aims to advance epilepsy treatment by understanding the epileptogenic processes that lead to recurrent seizures and cognitive dysfunction. I began studying the hippocampus as a graduate student, examining the post-transcriptional mechanisms of synaptic plasticity in primary neuronal and glial co-cultures. I continue to investigate the mechanisms of plasticity in the adult hippocampus, now in the pathological context of epileptogenesis in mouse models of epilepsy. As an epileptologist, I am privileged to participate in the care of Veterans with medication refractory epilepsy. Despite the expanding repertoire of treatments for seizures, we still lack therapies to prevent or cure epileptogenesis. Additionally, many epilepsy patients are also burdened with comorbid cognitive impairment, for which there are no treatments. These unmet needs are the primary motivation that guides my lab’s preclinical experimentation.

To elucidate the mechanisms underlying epileptogenesis, we have used single cell sequencing to profile cell type specific transcriptomic changes in the pilocarpine model of temporal lobe epilepsy. Many of our sequencing findings are concordant with existing literature on changes that occur during epileptogenesis, and have also generated several novel hypotheses for further exploration. One of the revelations from the data is the transcriptomically distinct population of microglia that are abundant in epileptic hippocampi, which we call epilepsy-associated microglia (EAM). The EAM share several genes with disease-associated microglia in other neurological disorders with increased risk for epilepsy, including Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injury.
Our follow-up studies with immunostaining and electron microscopy indicate that EAM have an “activated” phenotype. Experiments to dissect the pro- and anti-epileptogenic potential of these microglia will be pursued in the proposed studies.

Erie Boorman Headshot

Erie Boorman, Ph.D.

Faculty Member

Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
University of California, Los Angeles

Personal Statement

For the entirety of my career, my research has focused on elucidating the behavioral, computational, and neural bases of learning, memory, and decision making. For my graduate training, I was awarded a Wellcome Trust Prize Studentship to study for an M.Sc. and D.Phil. in Neurosciences at the University of Oxford. During my D.Phil. I worked with Dr. Matthew Rushworth to investigate decision making and executive function in humans and rodents. This training gave me a strong foundation in neuroimaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging, diffusion weighted imaging), transcranial magnetic stimulation, experimental lesions, and computational approaches to investigate learning and decision making. My graduate research imparted in me the value of a multi-modal approach to address a particular scientific question. For my postdoctoral training, I was awarded a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship to expand my computational toolkit by training in Neuroeconomic (with Drs. Antonio Rangel and John O’Doherty at Caltech) and Bayesian statistical (with Dr. Tim Behrens at Oxford and UCL) techniques and apply these tools to investigate the roles of frontostriatal and frontotemporal networks in constructing, using, and updating predictive models during both reward-guided and social decision making and learning. In my own Learning and Decision Making Lab, first at UC Davis and now UCLA, my primary approach is to integrate mathematical descriptions of the processes underlying learning, task representation, and decision making with advanced analytical techniques, applied to neural data across methods and species. Our research is focused primarily on two interrelated questions: how does the brain (1) build and use ‘cognitive maps’ to make efficient inferences that underpin generalization and flexible decision making; and (2) form and update predictive internal models that specify beliefs about relationships between environmental cues or latent (hidden) causes, our choices, and the outcomes that may follow?

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