Cell-Intrinsic Learning And Memory Storage Dynamics — Dr. David Glanzman Ph.D., Professor, in the Department Integrative Biology and Physiology, at UCLA College of the Life Sciences.
Dr. David Glanzman is Professor, in the Department Integrative Biology and Physiology, at UCLA College of the Life Sciences, Professor in the Department of Neurobiology in the David Geffen School of Medicine, and Member, Brain Research Institute.
Dr. Glanzman has a B.A. in Psychology from Indiana University Bloomington and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University.
Dr. Glanzman is interested in the cell biology of learning and memory in simple organisms.
In Dr. Glanzman’s lab research they use two animals, the marine snail Aplysia californica, and the zebrafish (Danio rerio).
Dr. Glanzman’s work on Aplysia: This invertebrate has a comparatively simple nervous system (~ 20000 neurons) that provides a valuable experimental model for understanding the cellular mechanisms that underlie simple forms of learning, such as habituation, sensitization, and classical conditioning.
Another experimental advantage of Aplysia is that sensory and motor neurons that mediate specific reflexes of the animal can be placed into dissociated cell culture where they will reform their synaptic connections.
These in vitro sensorimotor synapses are extremely useful for cellular and molecular studies of short-and long-term learning-related synaptic plasticity.