- Gordon M Shepherd (neuroscientist)
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Gordon Murray Shepherd is a neuroscientist who carries out basic experimental and theoretical research on how neurons are organized into microcircuits to carry out the functional operations of the nervous system. He is currently professor of neurobiology at the Yale School of Medicine.
Curriculum Vitae
Personal: Born Ames, Iowa. July 21, 1933. Married: Karen Margrethe Gadegaard 1959. Children: Gordon Murray Gadegaard Shepherd; Kirsten Eleanora Shepherd-Barr; Lisbeth Francisca Shepherd. Seven grandchildren Education: Iowa State College, B.S., 1955 Harvard Medical School, M.D., 1959 Oxford University, D.Phil., 1962 Appointments: National Institutes of Health, Office of Mathematical Research: l962-1964 Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Physiology Department II: l964-1966 Retina Foundation, Boston: l966 Massachusetts Institute of Technology: l967 Yale University School of Medicine, Physiology Department, 1967-1978, Neurobiology Department, 1978-present Visiting Appointments (selected): University of Pennsylvania, Visiting Scientist, Neurology Institute, 1971-72 College de France, Paris, Visiting Professor and Lecturer, 1986 Oxford University, Astor Visiting Lecturer, 2009 Offices (selected): Assoc. for Chemoreception Sciences (AChemS). Chairperson, 1981 Yale University, Deputy Provost Biomedical Sciences, 1991-1995 Journal of Neurophysiology (Editor-in-Chief) 1989-1995 Journal of Neuroscience (Editor-in-Chief) 1999-2003 President, Cajal Club, 2008-2010 Honors and Awards (selected): Javits Award, National Institute of Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders, 1985-1992 R.H. Wright Award in Olfactory Research, Simon Fraser University, 1987 Stanley K. Freeman Award, Assoc. Chemorec. Sci. (AChemS), 1988 Honorary degrees, Univ. Copenhagen (1999), Univ. Pavia (2006) Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2006 Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2008 Funding: National Institutes of Health: 1966-present National Science Foundation: 1977-1980 Department of Defence: 1985-1995 Teaching: Synaptic Organization of the Nervous System (1976-present) History of Modern Neuroscience (1995-present) Publications: over 270 articles Books: Shepherd, G.M. (l974). The Synaptic Organization of the Brain. New York: Oxford University Press. Second Edition (1979). Third Edition (Ed.) (1990). Fourth Edition (Ed.) ( 1997). Fifth Edition (Ed.) (2004). Shepherd, G.M. (l983). Neurobiology. New York: Oxford University Press. (Spanish edition, 1985; Russian edition, 1987). Second Edition (1988) (Japanese edition, 1990; Chinese edition, 1992; German edition, 1994). Third Edition (1994). Shepherd, G.M. (1991). Foundations of the Neuron Doctrine. New York: Oxford University Press. Segev, I., Rinzel, J. and Shepherd, G.M. (Eds.). (1995). The Theoretical Foundation of Dendritic Function. Selected Papers of Wilfrid Rall. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press Shepherd, G.M. (2010). Creating Modern Neuroscience. The Revolutionary 1950s. New York: Oxford University Press Shepherd, G.M. and Grillner, S. (Eds.) (2010). Handbook of Brain Microcircuits. New York: Oxford University PressEarly Contributions
His electrophysiological studies of the olfactory bulb (Shepherd, 1963) produced one of the first examples of a brain microcircuit. Building on this work he collaborated with Wilfrid Rall at NIH to construct the first computational models of brain neurons. This predicted dendrodendritic interactions in the olfactory bulb, subsequently confirmed by electronmicroscopy (Rall et al., 1966; Rall and Shepherd, 1968), hypothesized to mediate lateral inhibition of the sensory input. A collaboration (Sharp et al., 1975), using new methods of brain imaging, revealed that odors are encoded by different spatial activity patterns in the olfactory glomeruli of the olfactory bulb (Stewart et al. 1979). This showed that the neural basis of smell in virtually all vertebrates involves odor representation by glomerular activity patterns ("odor images") which are then processed by lateral inhibition mediated by the dendrodendritic circuits.
His lab continued to use the olfactory bulb as a general model for the integrative actions of neuronal dendrites. This showed that dendrites contain multiple computational units; backpropagating action potentials in dendrites carry out specific functional operations; and dendritic spines can function as semi-independent input-output units. The lab also provided a basic circuit for olfactory cortex (Haberly and Shepherd, 1973). These and related concepts were gathered in The Synaptic Organization of the Brain (1974). New concepts to replace the classical "neuron doctrine" were suggested (Shepherd, 1972), and the term "microcircuit" (Shepherd, 1978) for characterizing specific patterns of synaptic interactions in the nervous system.
Recent and current studies
The odor imaging studies have been extended by use of high-field functional MRI (7 and 9 Tesla), work started with his longtime colleague Charles Greer and members of the Yale Imaging Center (Xu et al., 2003, 2005). The lab has used viral tracing methods to reveal widely dispersed clusters of granule cells are hypothesized to be necessary for processing the distributed glomeruli activated by odor stimuli (Willhite et al., 2006). These experimental data are being used to build computational models of the distributed mitral and granule cell circuits, to obtain insight into the nature of the processing that underlies smell perception (Migliore and Shepherd, 2007; Migliore et al., 2010).
A new appreciation of the extensive but largely hidden "flavor system" in the human brain suggests a new field he has called "neurogastronomy" (Shepherd, 2006), which has the potential to enhance understanding of the factors contributing to obesity and other eating disorders.
In their studies of the neural basis of cognition, his lab is analyzing the active properties of the apical dendrites of cortical pyramidal cells for insight into their relation to cortical processing (Migliore and Shepherd, 2003). They are presently interested in how these dendritic properties may be affected in the earliest stages of cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease (Morse et al., 2010).
His lab was among the original group that founded the new field of neuroinformatics, with the first funding of the "Human Brain Project" in 1993. The home site is "SenseLab" (Shepherd et al., 1997), which contains a suite of 7 databases supporting research on olfactory receptors, odor maps, neuronal and dendritic properties, and neuronal and microcircuit models. The group includes Perry Miller, founder of the Yale Center for Medical Informatics, and Michael Hines, founder of the widely used modeling program NEURON. They are currently a member of the Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF), a NIH initiative to build a comprehensive web-based portal to support neuroscience research.
Students
The Shepherd lab has been a training ground for many students. They include 11 graduate students, 47 postdoctoral fellows and research associates, 17 Yale undergraduates, and 12 visiting scientists. The lab has contributed 5 chairs/presidents of AChemS and 6 recipients of the Wright Award. Many students, friends and collaborators returned for a symposium in November 2008 honoring him on his 75th birthday, which he called the best lab meeting ever. His science lineage from Sherrington to his students and grand-students may be found at neurotree.
Partial bibliography
- Gordon M. Shepherd (1994). Neurobiology (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195088433.
- Gordon M. Shepherd (2004). The Synaptic Organization of the Brain. Fifth Edition.. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195159561.
External links
Categories:- American neuroscientists
- Living people
- Yale School of Medicine faculty
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