Michal Zochowski by Andrew Cooke

Michal is a Biophysics professor from the University of Michigan and has been there for the last 15 years. Michal graduated from the University of Warsaw (in Poland) for his undergraduate, Masters, and PHD before coming to America to work at the University of Michigan. Michal is currently a Biophysics professor who specializes on the mechanisms of the formation of certain spatiotemporal patterns in select coupled systems, with special focus on their applicability during processing of information in the brain. To attempt to achieve this research Michal tries to connect the theoretical with experimental approaches. His group is focused on dynamic control and synchronization in those coupled systems as well as in complex computational systems. The couple systems they are especially interested in are self-adaptive ones that model neuromodulatory processes. Experimentally, the group he runs works on using optical imagery to view large neuromodulatory sections, and through this they can monitor activity spikes from individual neurons or as a large, averaged group of them. While this research is very complicated, it is unique in the way Michal combines physics, biology, and neuroscience in his overall research. 

Michals current research revolves around how the brain stores and processes long lasting information/memories and the importance that sleep has on that function. Synaptic plasticity is linked to the ability of the brain to take fleeting sensory information and store that as a long term memory/information. Using mice, Michal and his team will use newly found techniques and computational tools with recordings of the mice neural activity to find the effect of sleep-associated patterns in consolidating brain plasticity. The hypothesis being tested is that non-REM sleep plays a role in promoting plasticity between the LGN and the V1 (primary visual cortex) parts of the brain following the presentation of visual information. They will measure individual neuron changes in the LGN and V1 regions with the given stimulus and the given stimulus in the context of another (best way to put that I know it sounds kind of weird). They will then see if following this, the neurons that were selected and showed activity during the stimulus were used during the non-REM sleep to communicate between the LGN and V1 to increase plasticity. Overall this could be another massive piece of information proving how vital sleep is for our brains to communicate with themselves and learn from what we did during the day. 

1. https://lsa.umich.edu/physics/people/faculty/michalz.html 

2. https://lsa.umich.edu/physics/research/biological-physics.html 

https://braininitiative.nih.gov/funded-awards/thalamocortical-and-corticocortical-mechanisms-sleep-dependent-visual-learning