Mriganka Sur


Mriganka Sur is an Indian neuroscientist and the Newton Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Simons Center for the Social Brain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also a Visiting Faculty Member in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and N.R. Narayana Murthy Distinguished Chair in Computational Brain Research at the Centre for Computational Brain Research, IIT Madras.

Biography

Mriganka Sur did his early schooling at the St. Joseph's College, Allahabad and he received the Bachelor of Technology degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur in 1974, and the Master of Science and PhD degrees in electrical engineering in 1975 and 1978, respectively, from Vanderbilt University in Nashville. After postdoctoral research at Stony Brook University, he was appointed to the faculty of Yale University School of Medicine in 1983. He joined the faculty of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. in 1986. He was named in 1993 the Sherman Fairchild Professor of Neuroscience and in 1997 head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. He is currently the Newton Professor of Neuroscience and Director at Simons Center for the Social Brain at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Work

Sur is a pioneer in the study of brain plasticity and its mechanisms. Using experimental and theoretical approaches, his laboratory studies developmental plasticity and the dynamic changes in mature cortical networks during information processing, learning and memory. His laboratory has discovered fundamental principles by which neurons of the cerebral cortex are wired during development and change dynamically in adulthood. In landmark experiments, he "rewired" the brain to explore how the environment influences the development of cortical circuits. The retina, which normally projects to the visual cortex, was induced to project to structures that normally process hearing. Visual input altered the development of neuronal connections in the auditory cortex, thus enabling animals to use their "hearing" cortex to "see."
These findings have implications for restoring function after brain damage and for constructing neural prostheses for recovery from stroke or trauma. The Sur laboratory also studies genes involved in constructing the cerebral cortex, and the ways in which gene networks are influenced by brain activity. These studies are providing important insights into childhood disorders such as autism. Stemming from this work, a pharmacological treatment for Rett Syndrome has entered clinical trials.
By imaging calcium responses of single neurons and a closely related glial cell type, astrocytes, in vivo using high resolution imaging methods, his laboratory has discovered that astrocytes have remarkably specific functional properties and mediate blood flow to active brain regions. This work has revealed the mechanism for noninvasive brain imaging methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging.
The Sur laboratory has also shown how neurons of the mature visual cortex alter their responses dynamically based on the configuration of visual stimuli in space and time. The laboratory studies the mechanisms by which visual neurons at the earliest stages of cortical processing are influenced not only by "bottom up" visual inputs but also in "top down" manner by mental state, including attention, arousal, and expectation. These studies provide fundamental information about higher brain mechanisms, including those involved in vision, cognition, and learning.

Honours and awards

Sur has received the Charles Judson Herrick Award from the American Association of Anatomists, the A.P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the McKnight Neuroscience Development Award, the School of Science Prize for Excellence in Graduate Teaching, the Distinguished Overseas Lectureship of the Australian Neuroscience Society, the Sigma Xi Distinguished Lectureship, and the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and named among the top 50 alumni of IIT Kanpur. He has been honoured at MIT with the Hans-Lukas Teuber Scholar Award in the Brain Sciences, the Sherman Fairchild Chair, and the Newton Chair. He has been elected to the membership of the National Academy of Medicine USA, the Royal Society of London, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, India, the Indian National Science Academy, the Rodin Academy Sweden, the Neurosciences Research Program, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Neuropsychological Symposium, and the Third World Academy of Sciences.

Major publications