Science seminars

The Last Brain Region: the Study of the Claustrum, it’s Form, Connectivity and Function

Science Seminar

Associate Professor John Van Horne
Associate Professor of Neurology, University of Southern California, USA

Date: Friday 8 December 2017
Time: 3 - 4pm followed by Drinks
Venue: Monash Biomedical Imaging Auditorium, 770 Blackburn Road, Clayton

Abstract

The claustrum is a thin, irregularly shaped collection of neurons embedded between the white matter pathways of the extreme and external capsules of the brain. Though appearing in brain illustrations over decades, its functional significance has remained mysterious. The late Sir Francis Crick speculated that it may play a role in the conscious experience due to its unique neuroanatomical location, wide-ranging connectivity, and seeming contributions to sensory integration. Though numerous studies have taken place using laboratory animals, in vivo human
investigations of the claustra using neuroimaging have been infrequent. In this presentation, I will introduce the claustrum, its neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and explore its study using human brain imaging methods. I will discuss its clinical importance but make note to the many challenges which it exist in its neurological characterisation. Finally, I will argue that the claustrum deserves further scrutiny in the living human to finally define its functional role in the brain.

Biography

John Darrell Van Horn, M.Eng., Ph.D is an associate professor of Neurology with additional appointments in Neuroscience and in Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, California. He received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Eastern Washington University in Cheney, WA, a masters in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park, and his PhD from the University of London in the United Kingdom. He conducted a post-doctoral fellowship at the National
Institute of Mental Health on the National Institutes of Health main campus in Bethesda, MD, specialising in human neuroimaging investigation of brain function. He has held faculty positions at Dartmouth College, the University of California, Los Angeles, and now, USC. He is an accomplished author (over 150 publications, h-index>44), university-level educator, and is known internationally as an expert in neuroinformatics and data sharing. 

Among his research articles are many publications on multimodal neuroimaging of the brain and the characterisation of mild and severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). This includes using MRI and DTI to model the morphological effects of brain injury as well as the effect on white matter fiber pathways. Recent work involves the study of the claustrum in the brain using MRI methods. 

He is past education as well as program chair for the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) and current vice-president of the Society for Claustrum Research. He directs the masters of science in neuroimaging and informatics masters of science program at USC – a one-of-its-kind program covering the spectrum of human neuroimaging research and practice – as well as contributes to other USC graduate programs. He is also the PI of the NIH Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Training Coordinating Center (TCC), an effort to synthesise data science educational content from around the internet, index it into a common database framework, and make the information searchable, sortable, and openly available for users to organise into personalised training plans. He directs a unique series of five-day mentored and facilitated Data Science Innovation Lab events on specific topics such as mobile health, the microbiome, and single cell dynamics. Finally, Dr. Van Horn oversees a data science scholarly rotation program which pairs junior biomedical researchers with more senior data scientists to work on projects of mutual interest.