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NeurOmikron

Konstantinos Lagogiannis

Neuroscience Research Fellow at King’s College London, studying the neural basis of behaviour.

Research focus

My PhD thesis focused was purely theoretical and focused on a prominent problem in artificial neural memory systems (engrams): how to maintain old memories in the face of interference by the continuous encoding of new memories. This apparent notorious problem is also known as the plasticity vs stability dilemma.
A mathematical formulation of a memory system reveals that different plasticity rules, operating at the level of the single synapse, can have profound implications on a memory system’s capacity to recall stored memories. Or so it seems. I have now come to realization that the conceptual framework of memory we used, the associated ideas of memory engrams is most likely misconceived and the puzzles it generates are illusions [1,4]. I would like to someday and lay bare these misconceptions with the hope of proposing a new conceptual framework that could guide memory systems research.

My research is now focused on understanding the mechanics of behaviour in simpler, model organism. I believe such understanding holds many surprises and can provide a solid foundation for the understanding of evermore complex organisms. I am on the lookout to find that nature has come up with some very elegant solutions for behaviour in the wild. Such solutions may prove to be principled solutions shared across multiple species faced with the same problems. An example for this from my side would be the continuous oscillator circuit that is perturbed by sensory stimuli allowing animals to navigate large odour/sensory gradients [3] and the implications for how the neural systems of behaviour guide behaviour.
My most recent neuroscience work focuses on development, and how experience shapes foraging and hunting behaviour in larval zebrafish. For this I employ behavioural imaging as well as 2-photon calcium imaging techniques and analysis.

  1. Philosophical Foundations of Neuronscience
  2. Why your brain is not a computer
  3. Continuous lateral oscillations as a core mechanism for taxis in Drosophila larvae
  4. The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature

Publications

This is still in the making, but in any case here I intend to list all publication contributions and note how they intersect with the main focus see Research:

You can find an automatically generated publication list on my Google Scholar Profile

or on my ORCID profile

Patents

I have four jointly registered disclosures with the University of Edinburgh’s, innovations :

1. Neural Plasticity Model, Invention id: ERI2020/083 
2. Mushroom body learning algorithm, Invention id: ERI2020/105 
3. A method for tracking animals in vials, Invention id: ERIXXXX
4. A method for handling the transfer of individual small soft-tissue samples and soft-bodied organisms,Invention id: ERIXXX

Making

I am easily taken in by engineering projects and do-it-yourself, and maker projects. My undergraduate studies where in electrical-electronic engineering and I have not lost the bug for tech, even though I fell in love with biology. I take opportunities to build my own experimental apparatus when needed (link to projects [soon]). I feel lucky to live at time and place where open-source hardware and micro-controllers are abundantly available and very affordable. If only I was a teeneger again!

I have designed customized experimental apparatus to meet my specific experimental requirements. When it comes to designing apparatus I operate as a frugal engineer. I try to find a cost-effective way of obtaining good enough data such that the cost-barrier is lowered and similar experimental setups can be built and experiments replicated in as many labs across the world as possible. It is for the same reason I am a proponent of open source hardware and software projects. I am always open to sharing designs and solutions. So please get in touch, as I have to recognize that although willing to share I find the work involved with documenting and publicly sharing designs to be overwhelming. Especially when the pressure is to carry on with research and make the next experiment happen. I am forever in debt to those who have taken time to share and document their work.

I will try to collect some of my works and share here:

  1. 3D printed Optical Slit design for DYI Light-sheet microscope I made a little affordable light-sheet microscope at home, using plastic lenses and cheap laser. I have yet to document the whole project, but this optical slit may come in handy.

  2. Half-light ring holder for 35mm petridish arena for microscope mounted experiments This half arena allows for showing visual stimuli on side, while illuminating with IR on the other. The behaviooural recording camera is mounted from below.
  3. IR LED ring holder for 35mm petridish arena (Autodesk Inventor file) For zebrafish behavioural experiments
  4. LED bar, for building custom IR illumination stages Was used to build a Drosophila larva arena behavioural recording arena by combining 4 of these to build a rectangle and and mounting a square perspex in the center.
  5. An automated pippeting / liquid handling robot
  6. An interval timer for martial arts gyms I made this for the gym where I train BJJ. Since then a few other gyms saw it and asked me to make them such a bespoke interval timer. Get in touch for the code

Software

I am a proponent of open-source and in love with its accessibility and diversity. If you don’t use them already I suggest finding the courage and move out of comfort zone, discover Linux, by installing Ubuntu as your operating system. Write beautiful manuscripts and dissertations with Latex My latest discovery was jekyll, while I was looking for a good way to make this simple website. This website was created with Jekyll, and it uses the prologue theme. Find out more at jekyllrb.com You can find the source code for Jekyll on GitHub [jekyll-organization]:(https://github.com/jekyll)

software:

  1. A behavioural tail tracker for tethered zebrafish larvae Use this for tracking the tail behaviour while calcium imaging a zebrafish larva under a 2-photon microscope, with tail free to move.
  2. A fast ellipse detect algorithm
  3. A behavioural tracker for freely swimming larvae in 35mm dish
  4. A ROI event triggered FLIR camera recorder, with ability to capture frames preceding trigger event

I was born and raised in Piraeus, Greece and studied electrical and electronic engineering at the University of Liverpool. I then followed up with a MSc. in Complexity Science at the University of Southampton. It is during that time when I got hooked on neuroscience after meeting the three eyed tadpole during a lecture on computational neuroscience, and hence the little three-eyed avatar of this website.

Following those studies, I returned to Greece for my compulsory national service. This lasted a full year. The first terms were spent in the artillery division posted to the island of Chios, where I aso trained as a corporal. The final few months of my service I was posted at the general army directive’s informatics department, where I was lucky enough to serve by coding army software, in peace.

After my release, I worked as an electronics engineer in industry for a year and then returned to Southampton to do a PhD in computational neuroscience. I then went on to do a postdoc at University of Edinburgh in the lab of Barbara Webb, where I got the chance to work on the mechanics and models of behaviour of insects. After three lovely years in Edinburgh, I got a postdoc position in at King’s College London, in the lab of Martin Meyer. Since 2018 I have been a research associate at King’s College London doing neuroscience research towards understanding the neural and behavioural principles of adaptive behaviour using the amazing zebrafish larvae as a model organism.

[Continued]

LinkedIn Github Gitlab ORCID

Reading List

As a token of appreciation to my lovely books, I thought it would be nice to share a list of things I’ve read or may be reading right now, as I return to some of them and consult them from time to time. These are listed in no particular order

General reading:

  1. Debt the first 5000 years,David Graeber
  2. “Outliers” , Malcolm Gladwell,
  3. “The Human Network”, Matthew Jackson,
  4. “Report to Greco”, Nikos Kazantzakis :
  5. “The One dimensional man”, Herbert Markuse
  6. “Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese”, Patrick Leigh Fermor
  7. “Ecological Rationality”, Peter Todd , Gigerenzer, Gerd (Ed)
  8. “Thinking Fast and Slow”, Daniel Kahneman

Neuroscience and Philosophy

  1. “Philosophical Foundations Of Neuroscience”, M.R. Bennett and P.M.S. Hacker
  2. The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature
  3. “Principles of Neural Development”,Dale Purves & Jeff W. Lichtman
  4. “Neurobiology”,Gordon Shepherd
  5. “From Conditioning to Conscious Recollection, Memory Systems of the Brain”,Howard Eichenbaum & Neal J. Cohen,
  6. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” ,Thomas S. Khun
  7. “Principles of Neural Design”, Peter Sterling and Simon Laughlin,
  8. “Methods in Neuronal Modeling, From Ions to Networks 2nd Edition”, Edited volume by Christof Koch and Idan Segev,
  9. “Principles of Neural Information Theory, Computational Neuroscience and Metabolic Efficiency”, James V Stone.