Lisa M. Giocomo

Lisa Giocomo is an American neuroscientist who is a Professor of Neurobiology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at Stanford University School of Medicine. Giocomo probes the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying cortical neural circuits involved in spatial navigation and memory.

Early life and education Giocomo grew up in Highlands Ranch, Colorado reporting that she spent a lot of time outdoors. She attributed her early interest in science to her outdoor exploration as a child and thought that pursuing a career in medicine would satisfy her interest in science. Motivated to go into medicine, Giocomo then worked as a mental health counselor at a local clinic as well as at the Veterans Affairs Hospital where she also conducted research on psychiatric illnesses.

Giocomo completed her bachelor's degree at Baylor in 2002, graduating with a degree in Psychology and then pursued a master's degree in Psychology at Boston University. These results might provide insight into the mechanisms through which nicotine has memory-enhancing effects. as well as the differences between metabotropic glutamate receptor modulatory effects on synaptic transmission, Giocomo began to study grid cells. Grid cells are cells in the cortex that exhibit spatially modulated firing fields that are repeated across the environment to continually update the animal of its position in space. In a first author paper published in Science, Giocomo found that grid cells exhibit differences in frequency of subthreshold membrane potential oscillations in the entorhinal cortex across the dorsal to ventral axis. These findings are in line with the Burgess and O’Keefe Model such that differences in the frequency of subthreshold somatic oscillations results in differences in spatial frequency of grid cell fields. She concluded that, taking into account the experimental data, both the attractor dynamics and oscillatory interference models help to explain the properties of grid cell firing in the entorhinal cortex. In addition to looking at other computational models of grid cells, Giocomo described the function of head direction cells in the entorhinal cortex in a first author paper in Cell. She found that head direction cells are organized topographically.

Career and research From 2011 to 2012, Giocomo held the title of Group Leader at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Giocomo was then recruited to Stanford University in 2013 where she held the title of Assistant Professor of Neurobiology until 2018. The Giocomo Lab focuses on the neurobiology of functionally defined cell types in the entorhinal cortex. Since grid cells use path integrating in computing the neural representation of an animals location in space, Giocomo and her lab hypothesized that there must be a sort of error-correction mechanism in place in the brain otherwise the error would accumulate and animals would be unable to navigate their environments. They observed that place scale also expanded in areas far from environmental boundaries, and that place field stability was reduced and spatial learning was impaired. They found that the entorhinal maps restructure to incorporate learned reward locations and this restructuring improved positional decoding when the animal was in close proximity to the reward location. In 2024, Giocomo was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, awarding her about $9 million in direct research support over a seven-year term.

Awards and honors 2024 HHMI Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute 2019 Vallee Scholar Award 2018 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, Office of Naval Research 2018 Young Investigator Award, Society for Neuroscience 2016 James S McDonnell Foundation Scholar, James S McDonnell Foundation Scholar 2016 Medal of Service for Contributions to Research Baylor University 2014 Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award in the Neurosciences, Klingenstein-Simons Foundation 2013 Sloan Fellow, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation 2012 Peter and Patricia Gruber International Research Award, The Gruber Foundation Entorhinal velocity signals reflect environmental geometry. Munn RGK, Mallory CS, Hardcastle K, Chetkovich DM, Giocomo LM. Nature Neuroscience. 2020;23:239-251 Remembered reward locations restructure entorhinal spatial maps. Butler WN*, Hardcastle K*, Giocomo LM. Science. 2019;363:1447-1452 The shifting sands of cortical divisions. Hardcastle K, Giocomo LM. Neuron. 2019;102:8-11 Emergent elasticity in the neural code for space. Ocko SA, Hardcastle K, Giocomo LM, Ganguli S. PNAS. 2018;E11798-E11806 Principles governing the integration of landmark and self-motion cues in entorhinal cortical codes for navigation. Campbell MG, Ocko SA, Mallory CS, Low IC, Ganguli S, Giocomo LM. Nature Neuroscience. 2018;21:1096-1106 A multiplexed, heterogeneous, and adaptive code for navigation in medial entorhinal cortex. Hardcastle K, Maheswaranathan N, Ganguli S, Giocomo LM. Neuron. 2017;94:375-387 Environmental boundaries as an error correction mechanism for grid cells. Hardcastle K, Ganguli S, Giocomo LM. Neuron. 2015;86:827–839 Environmental boundaries as a mechanism for correcting and anchoring spatial maps. Giocomo LM. Journal of Physiology. 2016;594:6501-6511. Topography of head direction cells in medial entorhinal cortex. Giocomo LM, Stensola T, Bonnevie T, Van Cauter T, Moser MB, Moser EI. Current Biology. 2014;24(3):252-62. Temporal frequency of subthreshold oscillations scales with entorhinal grid cell field spacing. Giocomo LM, Zilli EA, Frans_n E, Hasselmo ME. Science. 2007;315(5819):1719-22. Nicotinic modulation of glutamatergic synaptic transmission in region CA3 of the hippocampus. Giocomo LM, Hasselmo ME. Eur J Neurosci. 2005;22(6):1349-56.