Jessica A. Cardin

Jessica Cardin is an American neuroscientist who is an associate professor of neuroscience at Yale University School of Medicine. Cardin's lab studies local circuits within the primary visual cortex to understand how cellular and synaptic interactions flexibly adapt to different behavioral states and contexts to give rise to visual perceptions and drive motivated behaviors. Cardin's lab applies its knowledge of adaptive cortical circuit regulation to probe how circuit dysfunction manifests in disease models.

Early life and education In grade nine, she conducted an experiment in her house, using mice as a model organism to probe sex based differences in learning. Cardin pursued her undergraduate degree at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York where she majored in biological sciences and started conducting research in a real laboratory, instead of her own home. At Cornell, Cardin joined the lab of Timothy J. DeVoogd, where she studied learning in songbirds and mapped out the morphology and anatomy of the high vocal center (HVC) in female canaries. Her undergraduate research led to a publication in Brain Research where she helped to adapt a technique to morphologically define specific projection pathways to the high vocal center (HVC). Once at UPenn, Cardin rotated in the lab of Ted Abel, a new faculty member at the time, studying the molecular basis of memory storage. During her rotation, Cardin helped Abel write a review paper exploring the memory suppression both in invertebrates and vertebrates. Working under the mentorship of Diego Contreras, Cardin delved into electrophysiology, where she was able to record neural activity at single cell resolution in the visual cortex of cats to probe the dynamics of visual cortex computations. She found that behavioral states drastically influence the neural firing patterns of auditory neurons. By pharmacologically inhibiting and exciting the NiF, Cardin found that the NiF is the primary integration site of behavioral state information and it relays this information to the HVC to drive its responsiveness to behavioral state. Overall, Cardin's findings in graduate school highlight the noradrenergic neurons in the NiF as the critical integrators of brain state to relay state information during vocal learning in songbirds. She explored both simple and complex cells in the primary visual cortex and found that, while they both burst at gamma frequencies, only simple cells show a selective stimulus feature-dependent response to visual stimulation. Since rhythmic synaptic input drives visually evoked activity in both simple and complex fast rhythmic bursting cells of the visual cortex, Cardin proposes that these cells may distribute stimulus driven gamma oscillations throughout the neocortex. Gain modulation is a neural phenomenon in which response amplitude is modified without changing selectivity. They found that fast-spiking interneurons had amplified gamma oscillations when driven at frequencies between 8 and 200 Hz through optogenetic manipulation. Their technology enabled researchers to ask questions about the roles of specific neural populations in the brain at much greater specificity than ever before. Cardin's lab further applies their knowledge of adaptive cortical circuit regulation to probe how circuit dysfunction manifests in disease models. and has been integrally involved in the organization and planning of the COSYNE Conference since 2009. Heightened arousal states, compared to quiescent states, suppressed spontaneous neural firing and increased the signal to noise ratio of visual responses. They found that specific projection populations process and route visual information to downstream targets in functionally different ways to inform behavior. By removing a critical signalling receptor, ErbB4, from VIP neurons, Cardin and her team saw deficits in sensory processing and dysregulation of cortical state dependence they had shown was important to cortical function in earlier experiments. 2015 Smith Family Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research 2014 McKnight Scholar Award 2012 Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship 2011 NARSAD Young Investigator Award 2010 Klingenstein Fellowship Award in Neuroscience 2005 Kirschtein Individual Postdoctoral NRSA Research Fellowship Batista-Brito, R.*, Vinck, M.*, Ferguson, K.A., Chang, J., Laubender D., Lur, G., Ramakrishnan, C., Deisseroth K., Higley, M.J., and Cardin, J.A. Developmental Dysfunction of VIP Interneurons Impairs Cortical Circuits. Neuron 2017, 95:884-95. *Co-first authors. Vinck, M.*, Batista-Brito, R.*, Knoblich, U., Cardin, J.A. Arousal and locomotion make distinct contributions to cortical activity patterns and visual encoding. Neuron 2015, 86,740-54. *Co-first authors Cardin, J.A. Dissecting local circuits in vivo: Integrated optogenetic and electrophysiology approaches for exploring inhibitory regulation of cortical activity. J Physiol Paris 2012, 106, 104–11. Cardin, J.A., E.M. Carlén, K. Meletis, U. Knoblich, F. Zhang, K. Deisseroth, L.H. Tsai, and C.I. Moore. Targeted optogenetic stimulation and recording of neurons in vivo using cell type-specific expression of Channelrhodopsin-2. Nature Protocols 2010, 5:247-254. Cardin, J.A., E.M. Carlén, K. Meletis, U. Knoblich, F. Zhang, K. Deisseroth, L.H. Tsai, and C.I. Moore. Driving fast-spiking cells induces gamma rhythm and controls sensory responses. Nature 2009, 459:663-7. Cardin, J.A., L.A. Palmer, and D. Contreras. Cellular mechanisms underlying stimulus-dependent gain modulation in primary visual cortex neurons. Neuron 2008, 59:150-160. Cardin, J.A., L.A. Palmer, and D. Contreras. Stimulus-dependent gamma (30–50 Hz) oscillations in simple and complex Fast Rhythmic Bursting cells in primary visual cortex. J Neurosci 2005, 25:5339-50. Cardin, J.A., and M.F. Schmidt. Auditory responses in multiple sensorimotor song system nuclei are co-modulated by behavioral state. J Neurophysiol 2004, 91:2148-63. Cardin, J.A., and M.F. Schmidt. Noradrenergic inputs mediate state dependence of auditory responses in the avian song system. J Neurosci 2004, 24:7745-53. Cardin, J.A., and M.F. Schmidt. Song system auditory responses are stable and highly tuned during sedation, rapidly modulated and unselective during wakefulness, and suppressed by arousal. J Neurophysiol 2003, 90: 2884–2899. Cardin, J.A. and T. Abel. Memory suppressor genes: enhancing the relationship between synaptic plasticity and memory storage. J Neurosci Res 1999, 58:10-23. Benton, S, J.A. Cardin, and T.J. DeVoogd. Lucifer Yellow filling of area X-projecting neurons in the high vocal center of female canaries. Brain Research 1998, 799:138-147.