Nathaniel N. Urban, PhD

  • Professor, Neurobiology

Phone

412-648-3396

E-mail

nurban@pitt.edu

Personal Website

website link

Education & Training

PhD, University of Pittsburgh (1998)

Campus Address

E1440 Starzl Biomedical Science Tower

One-Line Research Description

Physiology imaging and computation in the olfactory system.

Research in my laboratory focuses on the understanding of the physiological mechanisms underlying functional and computational properties brain neuronal networks. These mechanisms are elucidated by detailed studies of the physiological properties of the synapses, cells, and circuits involved in the performance of a given task. Research in the lab focuses on how phenomena such as dendritic integration and synaptic plasticity may allow small groups of neurons to perform complex functions. For these experiments we make use of the techniques of whole cell recording, including paired recordings of synaptically connected cells, and optical imaging to acquire data from both in vivo and in vitro preparations.

My current interests center on the circuitry of the olfactory bulb. The olfactory bulb and the individual glomerular units of which it is comprised provide an ideal system for studying how physiological processes such as dendritic integration and synaptic plasticity play a functional role in a brain network. Current projects focus on how signals arriving at different glomeruli are integrated by the dendrodendritic synaptic connections made between neurons in the bulb. My recent work has described the lateral spread of inhibition and excitation within the network of the mitral and tufted cells, which are the output neurons of the olfactory bulb. These results have provided insights on the physiological mechanisms underlying the competitive interactions between mitral cells and on how these mechanisms shape odor representations at the level of the olfactory bulb

Understanding such computational properties of brain networks often requires the simultaneous acquisition of data from several cells within a network and/or from multiple locations within a single cell. Thus, I also am interested in the application and development of physiological and optical techniques that facilitate this sort of parallel data acquisition in vitro and in vivo.

Representative Publications


Geramita MA, Wen JA, Rannals MD, Urban NN. Decreased amplitude and reliability of odor-evoked responses in two mouse models of autism. Journal of Neurophysiology. PMID 31891524 DOI: 10.1152/jn.00277.2019 


Liu A, Urban NN. Prenatal and Early Postnatal Odorant Exposure Heightens Odor-Evoked Mitral Cell Responses in the Mouse Olfactory Bulb. Eneuro. 4. PMID 28955723 DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0129-17.2017 

 

Case DT, Burton SD, Gedeon JY, Williams SG, Urban NN, Seal RP. Layer- and cell type-selective co-transmission by a basal forebrain cholinergic projection to the olfactory bulb. Nature Communications. 8: 652. PMID 28935940 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00765-4 


Burton SD, LaRocca G, Liu A, Cheetham CE, Urban NN. Olfactory bulb deep short-axon cells mediate widespread inhibition of tufted cell apical dendrites. The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society For Neuroscience. PMID 28003347 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2880-16.2016 


Geramita MA, Burton SD, Urban NN. Distinct lateral inhibitory circuits drive parallel processing of sensory information in the mammalian olfactory bulb. Elife. 5. PMID 27351103 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.16039 

 

Ermentrout, G.B., Galen, R.F. and Urban, N.N. Reliability, synchrony and noise. Trends Neurosci. Aug;31(8):428-34, 2008. Epub Jul 5, 2008.

 

Arevian, A.C., Kapoor, V. and Urban, N.N. Dynamic Gating of Lateral inhibition in the Olfactory Bulb. Nature Neuroscience. January2008| doi:10.1038/nn2030].

 

Bagley, J., LaRocca, G., Jimenez, D.A. and Urban, N.N. Adult neurogenesis and specific replacement of interneuron subtypes in the mouse main olfactory bulb. BMC Neuroscience, Nov 9:8(1):92, 2007.

 

Kapoor V. and Urban N.N. Glomerulus-specific, long latency activity in the olfactory bulb granule-cell network. J. Neuroscience,26(45):11709-19, 2006.

 

Gal‡n, R.F., Fourcaud-Trocme, N., Ermentrout, G.B. and Urban N.N.Correlation-induced synchronization of oscillations in olfactory bulb neurons. J. Neuroscience, 26(14):3646-55, 2006.