Wu Tsai Neuro Seminar w/ Jeff Magee

Good morning SOM Stanford Research Park Community,

We invite you to join us for next week’s Neurosciences Seminar. The seminar will be held in-person on the main Stanford campus with 3 satellite viewing locations in Stanford Research Park.

🗓️ Thurs, Oct 9, 2025

Learning and memory mechanisms
Jeffrey “Jeff” Magee, PhD

Baylor College of Medicine | Host: John Huguenard

Understanding how brains learn and remember remains among the most important challenges in science. Recent studies implicate a new form of synaptic plasticity, named Behavioral Timescale Synaptic Plasticity (BTSP), in the generation of hippocampal activity patterns that are required for experience based learning and memory. BTSP is a strong, bidirectional plasticity effecting synaptic weights over many seconds of time. It is induced by single dendritic plateau potentials, as opposed to many action potentials, and is thus capable of producing new place cells in one-shot. Plateau potential initiation is controlled, at least in part, by local feedback inhibition and an instructive input from a higher-order brain region that potentially links the plasticity to current experience. The novel credit assignment procedure at work in BTSP provides a non-standard mechanism for memory storage and retrieval that could mitigate the need for widespread synapse stabilization. In addition, it may allow hippocampal networks to form both memories of specific behavioral episodes and to generalize based off past episodes. Finally, recent BTSP investigations could provide a basis for future explorations into how brains learn and remember ranging from the systems and cognitive levels down to the basic biochemical building blocks of learning and memory.

⏰ Time: 12:00-1:00 PM (PT)
Come 15 minutes early (11:45 AM) to enjoy coffee, cookies, and conversation with the speaker and your colleagues (main campus location only)

📍 Locations:

• Main Campus (in person): Gunn Rotunda (E241), Stanford Neurosciences Building
• Stanford Research Park satellite locations:
  • 3172 Porter Drive, Room 253
  • 3174 Porter Drive, Room 140
  • 1070 Arastradero Road, Room 211

Learn about the SRP satellites »

Learn more and get involved:

• Nominate speakers for the 2026-2027 seminar series
• About the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Seminar Series »
• Sign up to dine or meet with the seminar speakers »
• See all upcoming and past seminars »
• Sign up for Wu Tsai Neuro’s mailing list »
• Join the #neuroscience slack channel »

📅 Want to add all of the seminars to your calendar?
Download the calendar here or, for live updates, copy this link and use these instructions for subscribing to a public calendar: Outlook, Mac, Google Calendar.

Best regards,

Emily Elrod (she/they)
Programs Associate | Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, Stanford University
📧 eelrod@stanford.edu | neuroscience@stanford.edu
💻 neuroscience.stanford.edu