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Faculty
Research Interests Research in my lab focuses on synaptic integration and neuronal excitability in young, adult, and aged neurons of the hippocampal formation—a region of the brain important for certain aspects of learning and memory and one of the first areas of the brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease. Using a combination of single-channel patch-clamp recording methods, whole-cell recording techniques, fluorescence calcium imaging, and computer modeling we are studying how voltage-gated channels are distributed within the dendritic tree and how this interacts with synaptic inputs to drive a neuron to fire. Other interests of the lab include how intracellular calcium dynamics in neurons, and its effects on membrane excitability, are affected in the aging brain and how these changes affect the computations made by neurons in aging animals. Recent Publications Hemond, P. and Jaffe, D.B., Caloric restriction prevents aging-associated changes in spike-mediated Ca2+ accumulation and the slow afterhyperpolarization in hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons, Neurosci., 135:413-420, 2005. Gamper, N, Zaika, O, Li, Y., Martin, P, Hernandez, C, Perez, M, Wang, A.Y.C, Jaffe, D.B., and Shapiro, M.S. Oxidative Modification of M-type Potassium Channels as the Mechanism of Cytoprotective Neuronal Silencing, EMBO Journal, 25:4996-5004, 2006. Zaika, O, Lara, L, Gamper, N, Hilgemann, Jaffe, D, and Shapiro, M., Mechanism and functional role of angiotensin ii regulation of Kv7 (M-type) K+ channels, J. Physiol., 575:46-67, 2006.
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David B. Jaffe, Ph.D.