Nobel Prize winner to present neuroscience 25th anniversary lecture

A Nobel Prize winner whose work dramatically changed our understanding of how the brain creates our visual world will present a free public lecture Feb. 15 as the first in a series of events celebrating 25 years of neuroscience training on campus.

Nobel Laureate Torsten Wiesel, emeritus president of The Rockefeller University, will speak on Monday, Feb. 15, at 4 p.m. in room 1111 of the Genetics/Biotechnology Center, 425 Henry Mall. His lecture will explore the neural architecture of vision, from retina to cortex.

“We are extremely pleased that one of the most eminent figures in neuroscience in this century can be with us as we mark the 25th anniversary of the Neuroscience Training Program, which has produced some of the finest neuroscientists in the country,” says UW Medical School professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences Ronald Kalil, chair of the Neuroscience Training Program and director of the Center for Neuroscience.

Wiesel shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1981 with David Hubel and Roger Sperry. Hubel and Wiesel’s pioneering studies were the first to show how visual information collected by the retina is processed in the brain. Among many landmark discoveries, Hubel and Wiesel’s work demonstrated that infants must experience normal visual stimulation during an important “critical period” in early childhood in order to develop normal vision as adults.

The Neuroscience Training Program educates students from around the. The program also offers outreach activities that bring neuroscience to students in the local schools, the general public and private industry. In the past 25 years, the program has grown rapidly, much like the field of brain research itself. Today more than 70 faculty are members of the program.