Michael Hasselmo PhD, Experimental Psychology, Oxford University, 1988
Department of Psychology 64 Cummington Street Boston MA 02215 (617) 353-1397 (617) 353-1424 (FAX) hasselmo@bu.edu

Research Interests

Research in my laboratory focuses on regulation of different dynamical states in cortical networks by modulators such as acetylcholine and norepinephrine.

GABA_B modulation and theta rhythm

In physiological experiments, we are exploring how modulatory effects at GABA_B receptors could alter network dynamics during different phases of the theta rhythm oscillation in hippocampus. In computational modeling, we've analyzed how changes in strength of transmission within theta cycles could enhance encoding and retrieval of sequences of activity.

Acetylcholine and consolidation

Physiological experiments suggest that cholinergic modulation suppresses excitatory feedback from hippocampus to neocortex. Removal of this suppression could allow generation of sharp wave activity which spreads back to neocortical structures, possibly mediating the transfer of associations stored in hippocampus to neocortical structures. We are analyzing this hypothesis in further physiological and modeling work.

Sample publications

Further information is available at the CBD ongoing research pages.

Hasselmo, M.E., Bodelon, C. and Wyble, B.P. (2001) A proposed function for hippocampal theta rhythm: Separate phases of encoding and retrieval enhance reversal of prior learning. Neural Computation, 14: 1-25.

Wyble, B.P., Linster, C. and Hasselmo, M.E. (2000) Size of CA1-evoked synaptic potentials is related to theta rhythm phase in rat hippocampus. J. Neurophysiol., 83: 2138-2144.

Hasselmo, M.E. (1999) Neuromodulation: Acetylcholine and consolidation. Trends in Cog. Sciences 3: 351-359.

Linster, C., Wyble, B. and Hasselmo, M.E. (1999) Modulation of synaptic potentials in the piriform cortex by electrical stimulation of the horizontal limb of the diagonal band of Broca, J. Neurophysiology 81: 2737-2742.

Hasselmo, M.E. and McClelland, J.L. (1999) Neural models of memory. Curr. Opinion Neurobiol. 9: 184-188.

Patil, M.M. and Hasselmo, M.E. (1999) Modulation of inhibitory synaptic potentials in the piriform cortex. J. Neurophysiol. 81(5):2103-2118.

Wallenstein, G.V., Eichenbaum, H.B. and Hasselmo, M.E. (1998) The hippocampus as an associator of discontiguous events. Trends Neurosci. 21: 317-323.21: 317-323.

Sohal, V.S. and Hasselmo, M.E. (1998) Changes in GABA_B modulation during a theta cycle may be analogous to the fall of temperature during annealing. Neural Computation 10: 889-902.

Wallenstein, G.V. and Hasselmo, M.E. (1997) GABAergic modulation of hippocampal activity: Sequence learning, place field development, and the phase precession effect. Journal of Neurophysiology, 78(1): 393-408.