Jeff W. Lichtman (born 1951) is an American

neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist who has specialised knowledge in neuroscience, a branch of biology that deals with the physiology, biochemistry, psychology, anatomy and molecular biology of neurons, Biological neural network, n ...

. He is the Jeremy R. Knowles Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and

Santiago Ramón y Cajal Santiago Ramón y Cajal (; 1 May 1852 – 17 October 1934) was a Spanish neuroscientist, pathologist, and histologist specializing in neuroanatomy and the central nervous system. He and Camillo Golgi received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Med ...

Professor of Arts and Sciences at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. He is best known for his pioneering work developing the

neuroimaging Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive manner. Incre ...

connectomic technique known as

Brainbow Brainbow is a process by which individual neurons in the brain can be distinguished from neighboring neurons using fluorescent proteins. By randomly expressing different ratios of red, green, and blue derivatives of green fluorescent protein in in ...

Education and career

Lichtman was born in

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

in 1951. He grew up in the

Northeastern United States The Northeastern United States, also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast, is a geographic region of the United States. It is located on the Atlantic coast of North America, with Canada to its north, the Southe ...

. Lichtman received a BA from

Bowdoin College Bowdoin College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine. When Bowdoin was chartered in 1794, Maine was still a part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The college offers 34 majors and 36 minors, as well as several joint eng ...

in 1973. In 1980, he received both MD and PhD from

Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...

, where he was advised by

Dale Purves Dale Purves (born March 11, 1938) is Geller Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus in the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences where he remains Research Professor with additional appointments in the department of Psychology and Brain Sciences, and the ...

. After completing postdoctoral work at

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

, he established his lab at

Washington University School of Medicine Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) is the medical school of Washington University in St. Louis in St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1891, the School of Medicine has 1,260 students, 604 of which are pursuing a medical degree with or ...

and conducted research there for 30 years. In 2004, he was appointed Jeremy R. Knowles Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at

. In 2013, he was named the inaugural

Professor, a five-year appointment intended to recognize outstanding research and teaching. Lichtman is a faculty member within the Harvard Center for Brain Science and the Conte Center at Harvard University. From 2013 to 2016, he was a Grass Foundation Trustee.

Research

The Lichtman lab studies

activity-dependent plasticity Activity-dependent plasticity is a form of functional and structural neuroplasticity that arises from the use of cognitive functions and personal experience; hence, it is the biological basis for learning and the formation of new memories. Activity- ...

motor An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power gen ...

and autonomic circuits of living animals. Lichtman hypothesizes that

axon An axon (from Greek ἄξων ''áxōn'', axis), or nerve fiber (or nerve fibre: see spelling differences), is a long, slender projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, in vertebrates, that typically conducts electrical impulses known as action po ...

s undergo

synaptic pruning Synaptic pruning, a phase in the development of the nervous system, is the process of synapse elimination that occurs between early childhood and the onset of puberty in many mammals, including humans. Pruning starts near the time of birth and con ...

and strengthening in response to experiences, and these experiences cause neurons which co-innervate the same cell to compete for dominance, thereby driving

synaptic plasticity In neuroscience, synaptic plasticity is the ability of synapses to strengthen or weaken over time, in response to increases or decreases in their activity. Since memories are postulated to be represented by vastly interconnected neural circuit ...

. The lab uses genetically modified mice and automated imaging tools to identify

neural circuit A neural circuit is a population of neurons interconnected by synapses to carry out a specific function when activated. Neural circuits interconnect to one another to form large scale brain networks. Biological neural networks have inspired the ...

motifs throughout the nervous system. In 2007, Lichtman and Joshua R. Sanes first published the

mouse method, in which different fluorescent proteins are expressed stochastically in neighboring neurons within a mouse's

nervous system In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes th ...

, thereby allowing neighboring neuronal processes to be distinguishable by

fluorescence microscopy A fluorescence microscope is an optical microscope that uses fluorescence instead of, or in addition to, scattering, reflection, and attenuation or absorption, to study the properties of organic or inorganic substances. "Fluorescence microsc ...

. Subsequently, this technique has been adapted and used to map neural circuits in mice, ''

Caenorhabditis elegans ''Caenorhabditis elegans'' () is a free-living transparent nematode about 1 mm in length that lives in temperate soil environments. It is the type species of its genus. The name is a blend of the Greek ''caeno-'' (recent), ''rhabditis'' (ro ...

'', and ''

Drosophila melanogaster ''Drosophila melanogaster'' is a species of fly (the taxonomic order Diptera) in the family Drosophilidae. The species is often referred to as the fruit fly or lesser fruit fly, or less commonly the "vinegar fly" or "pomace fly". Starting with Ch ...

''. Additionally, the Lichtman lab developed a device called the Automatic Tape-Collecting Lathe Ultramicrotome (ATLUM), which can be used for automated

electron microscopy An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of accelerated electrons as a source of illumination. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times shorter than that of visible light photons, electron microscopes have a hi ...

neural circuit reconstruction Neural circuit reconstruction is the reconstruction of the detailed circuitry of the nervous system (or a portion of the nervous system) of an animal. It is sometimes called EM reconstruction since the main method used is the electron microscope (E ...

. Data from the Lichtman lab has been used in the

citizen science Citizen science (CS) (similar to community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, participatory monitoring, or volunteer monitoring) is scientific research conducted with participation from the public (who are sometimes re ...

game EyeWire, developed in collaboration with

Sebastian Seung Hyunjune Sebastian Seung (English: /sung/ or əŋ ) is President at Samsung Electronics & Head of Samsung Research and Anthony B. Evnin Professor in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Department of Computer Science. Seung has done influen ...

and

Winfried Denk Winfried Denk (born November 12, 1957 in Munich) is a German physicist. He built the first two-photon microscope while he was a graduate student (and briefly a postdoc) in Watt W. Webb's lab at Cornell University, in 1989. Early life and educa ...

, to construct a full

connectome A connectome () is a comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain, and may be thought of as its "wiring diagram". An organism's nervous system is made up of neurons which communicate through synapses. A connectome is constructed by tr ...

of the mouse

retina The retina (from la, rete "net") is the innermost, light-sensitive layer of tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focused two-dimensional image of the visual world on the retina, which then ...

. The lab is also interested in

inhibitory An inhibitory postsynaptic potential (IPSP) is a kind of synaptic potential that makes a postsynaptic neuron less likely to generate an action potential.Purves et al. Neuroscience. 4th ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates, Incorporated; 2008. ...

interneuron Interneurons (also called internuncial neurons, relay neurons, association neurons, connector neurons, intermediate neurons or local circuit neurons) are neurons that connect two brain regions, i.e. not direct motor neurons or sensory neurons. I ...

s in the

prefrontal cortex In mammalian brain anatomy, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) covers the front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. The PFC contains the Brodmann areas BA8, BA9, BA10, BA11, BA12, BA13, BA14, BA24, BA25, BA32, BA44, BA45, BA46, ...

, which are thought to be selectively vulnerable in

mental disorder A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...

s such as

autism The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...

schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...

Awards and honors

* Member,

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

(2014) * Transformative Research R01 Award,

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

(2011)

Selected publications

* * * * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lichtman, Jeff W. Living people 1951 births Date of birth missing (living people) American neuroscientists 21st-century scientists Bowdoin College alumni Washington University School of Medicine alumni Harvard University faculty