My research interests are in Systems and Computational Neuroscience, especially in understanding the neural basis of behavior and learning by studying processing at the cellular and network level in neuronal circuits of the brain. I am studying/have studied neural mechanisms underlying learning and memory and decision making, and coding of sensory information.

You can download my papers from the "Publications" list at the bottom.

Starting March 2009, I started as a post-doctoral research fellow in Loren Frank's lab at UCSF. I am investigating how memories are stored and represented in the hippocampus, and the interaction of the hippocampus with decision-making areas in the brain.

For my graduate work, I studied the rat vibrissa system in Dan Feldman's lab. The vibrissa (or whisker/barrel) system is an excellent system for studying the questions I am interested in. Whiskers are ethologically very important for rats - being nocturnal animals, they are an essential part of a rats sensory arsenal and are used for navigation, identifying objects and directing behavior. The cortical area representing the whiskers (barrel cortex) constitutes about 1/3-1/2 of their somatosensory cortex (S1) and sensory information coming from a single whisker is projected to a single cortical column or 'barrel', making this a very attractive anatomical and electrophysiological system for studying sensory representation.

My thesis focus was studying neural responses and encoding of stimuli during active sensation in the whisker system using various experimental (behavioral training, acute and chronic awake-behaving electrophysiological recordings) and computational techniques (quantitative analysis of physiology data and modeling). Rats actively move their vibrissae against stimulti to build a percept, and they can do complicated behavioral tasks like discrimintaing roughness of textures with their whiskers. Using chronic tetrode recordings in awake-behaving animals, I investigated the features of whisker kinetics that drive spiking responses in S1 neurons when rats are actively whisking against stimuli. Our studies identified a fundamental tactile feature of the natural environement and how it is encoded in a awake, behaving animals (Jadhav et al., Nat. Neurosci., 2009). These results shed important light on how aniamls encode stimulus information during natural behavior and how they discriminate between different stimuli (Jadhav and Feldman, Curr. Opi. Neurobiol., 2010).

In a previous project in Dan's lab, in collaboration with Massimo Scanziani, I studied the mechanisms underlying precise spike timing in S1 neurons in response to whisker deflection in the thalamocortical pathway of the barrel system (Gabernet et al., Neuron, 2005). Using extracellular recordings in the VPM thalamus and S1 cortex, I studied how spike jitter varies during rapid trains of stimuli. Using invitro recordings, Massimo showed that thalamocortical feed-forward inhibition controls the temporal window of integration of thalamic inputs to S1 barrel cortex and thus serves to increase the temporal resolution of tactile inputs.

Before graduate school, I spent a year in Shona Chattarji's lab in NCBS. The lab investigates stress and depression mechanisms and their effects on hippocampal and amygdalar function, using the rat as a model organism. Using anatomical, physiological and molecular methods, I looked at changes in dendritic structure, physiology and molecular expression in the hippocampus and amygdala as a substrate for the observed behavioral changes of memory impairments and increased anxiety (Vyas, Jadhav and Chattarji, Neuroscience, 2006, and Mitra et al., PNAS, 2005).

Previously, I have worked on various other projects involving Drosophila genetics, auditory attention, neural computational modelling and bioinformatics.

Publications:

(with links to pdfs)

1. Shantanu P. Jadhav and Daniel E. Feldman, “Texture coding in the whisker system”, Current Opinion in Neurobiology. Epub, Mar 16, 2010.

2. Lu Li*, Kevin J. Bender*, Patrick J. Drew, Shantanu P. Jadhav, Emily Sylwestrak, Daniel E. Feldman, “ Endocannabinoid signaling is required for development and critical period plasticity of the whisker map in somatosensory cortex”, Neuron. Nov 2009, vol. 65, pp. 537-549.

3. Shantanu P. Jadhav and Loren M. Frank, “Reactivating nemories for consolidation”, Neuron. Jun 2009, vol. 62, pp. 745-746 (Preview Article).

4. Shantanu P. Jadhav, Jason Wolfe, and Daniel E. Feldman, “Sparse temporal coding of elementary tactile features during active whisker sensation”. Nature Neuroscience. May 2009, vol. 12, pp. 792-800.

Supplementary material

5. Laetitia Gabernet, Shantanu P. Jadhav, Daniel E. Feldman, Matteo Carandini, and Massimo Scanziani, “Somatosensory integration controlled by dynamic thalamocortical feed-forward inhibition”, Neuron, Oct 2005, vol. 48, pp. 315-327.

6. Ajai Vyas*, Shantanu Jadhav* & Sumantra Chattarji, “Prolonged chronic stress induces amygdaloid neuronal hypertrophy and enhanced anxiety-like behavior”, Neuroscience, December 2006, vol. 143, pp. 387-393. (* = Equal Contributors).

7. Rupshi Mitra, Shantanu Jadhav, Bruce S. McEwen, Ajai Vyas, and Sumantra Chattarji, “Stress duration modulates the spatiotemporal patterns of spine formation in the basolateral amygdala”, PNAS, June 2005, vol. 102 (26), pp. 9371-9376.