University of Texas at San Antonio
UTSA Neurosciences Institute

Department of Neuroscience, Developmental,

And Regenerative Biology

One UTSA Circle
San Antonio, TX 78249

Personal statement
Every day, we perceive a barrage of stimuli from the external world. Amazingly, despite this incredible amount of information, we/animals determine which stimuli they will act upon (e.g., running toward the sound of prey or running away from the sound of a predator). Such goal-directed behaviors are crucial dynamic links between sensory stimuli and motor. Sensations and thoughts result from the coordinated activity of neuronal populations in space and time. Cortical microcircuits process sensory information to drive behavior. My research aims to decipher how populations of neurons, through the specific spatial and temporal structure of cortical activity “connectivity patterns,” encode information, generate perceptions, and execute behavioral decisions requires working at both the cellular and system levels. Every neuroscience textbook state that a well-established principle of the neocortical circuit organization is that inhibition is local while excitation is both local and long-range. Therefore, our current belief about GABAergic interneurons is that they only process information within a restricted cortical region. However, we have established that inhibition in the neocortex is also long-range across cortical and subcortical areas. Particularly, our data demonstrate a cell-type-specific functional organization of long-range inhibitory projections from the auditory, visual, and motor cortices. This prevalence of long-range GABAergic neurons across various cortical regions suggests that they are a general feature of the cortical circuit organization. I believe that this will lead to a new view of brain function in which information across areas is carried by both excitatory as well as inhibitory neurons. This will change the way neuroscience textbooks will be written.
a. Bertero A., Verrillo L., Apicella Aj. (2022). “A novel Layer 4 corticofugal Cell Type/Projection Involved in Thalamo-Cortico-Striatal Sensory Processing” Journal of neuroscience, 2022 Feb 23; 42(8):1383-1405. PMID:34983816
b. Bertero A., Feyen PLC., Zurita H., Apicella Aj. (2019). “A non-canonical Cortico-Amygdala Inhibitory Loop” Journal of neuroscience, 2019 Oct 23; 39(43):8424-8438. PMID:31511429
c. Rock C., Zurita H., Lebby S., Wilson C., and Apicella Aj. (2017). “Cortical Circuits of Callosal GABAergic Neurons” Cerebral Cortex, 2017 February 8:1-14.PMID:28174907
d. Rock C., Zurita H., Wilson C., and Apicella Aj. (2016). “An inhibitory corticostriatal pathway” eLIFE, 2016 May 9.PMID:27159237