Jeff W. Lichtman (born 1951) is an American

neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist specializing in neuroscience that deals with the anatomy and function of neurons, Biological neural network, neural circuits, and glia, and their Behavior, behavioral, biological, and psycholo ...

. 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 M ...

Professor of Arts and Sciences at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. He is best known for his pioneering work developing the

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

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 or SLC, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in the state. The city is the core of the Salt Lake Ci ...

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

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 List of regions of the United States, census regions United States Census Bureau. Located on the East Coast of the United States, ...

. Lichtman received a BA from

Bowdoin College Bowdoin College ( ) is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine. It was chartered in 1794. The main Bowdoin campus is located near Casco Bay and the Androscoggin River. In a ...

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

Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) is a private research university in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1853 by a group of civic leaders and named for George Washington, the university spans 355 acres across its Danforth ...

, where he was advised by Dale Purves. After completing postdoctoral work at

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is the third oldest medical school in the Un ...

, he established his lab at

Washington University School of Medicine Washington University School of Medicine (WashU Medicine) is the medical school of Washington University in St. Louis, located in the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1891, the School of Medicine shares a ca ...

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 memory, memories. ...

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 gene ...

and autonomic circuits of living animals. Lichtman hypothesizes that

axon An axon (from Greek ἄξων ''áxōn'', axis) or nerve fiber (or nerve fibre: see American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, spelling differences) is a long, slender cellular extensions, projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, ...

s undergo

synaptic pruning Synaptic pruning is the process of synapse elimination or weakening. Though it occurs throughout the lifespan of a mammal, the most active period of synaptic pruning in the development of the nervous system occurs between early childhood and the o ...

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 Chemical synapse#Synaptic strength, strengthen or weaken over time, in response to increases or decreases in their activity. Since memory, memories are postulated to be represent ...

. The lab uses genetically modified mice and automated imaging tools to identify neural circuit 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 complex system, highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its behavior, actions and sense, sensory information by transmitting action potential, signals to and from different parts of its body. 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. A fluorescence micro ...

. 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 Hybrid word, blend of the Greek ''caeno-'' (recent), ''r ...

'', and ''

Drosophila melanogaster ''Drosophila melanogaster'' is a species of fly (an insect of the Order (biology), 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", "pomace fly" ...

''. 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 electrons as a source of illumination. It uses electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing i ...

in neural circuit reconstruction. Data from the Lichtman lab has been used in the

citizen science The term citizen science (synonymous to terms like community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, participatory monitoring, or volunteer monitoring) is research conducted with participation from the general public, or am ...

game

EyeWire ''Eyewire'' is a citizen science game from Sebastian Seung's Lab at Princeton University. It is a human-based computation game that uses players to map retinal neurons. ''Eyewire'' launched on December 10, 2012. The game utilizes data generated ...

, developed in collaboration with

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

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 educ ...

, 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". These maps are available in varying levels of detail. A functional connectome shows connections between various brain ...

of the mouse

retina The retina (; or retinas) is the innermost, photosensitivity, light-sensitive layer of tissue (biology), tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some Mollusca, molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focus (optics), focused two-dimensional ...

. The lab is also interested in

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

interneuron Interneurons (also called internuncial neurons, association neurons, connector neurons, or intermediate neurons) are neurons that are not specifically motor neurons or sensory neurons. Interneurons are the central nodes of neural circuits, enab ...

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. It is the association cortex in the frontal lobe. The PFC contains the Brodmann areas BA8, BA9, BA10, BA11, BA12, ...

, which are thought to be selectively vulnerable in

mental disorder A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is ...

s such as

autism Autism, also known as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing d ...

schizophrenia Schizophrenia () is a mental disorder characterized variously by hallucinations (typically, Auditory hallucination#Schizophrenia, hearing voices), delusions, thought disorder, disorganized thinking and behavior, and Reduced affect display, f ...

Awards and honors

* Member,

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, 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 ...

(2014) * Transformative Research R01 Award,

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

(2011)

Selected publications

* * * * * *

References

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