Lecture to explore the brain's symphony of space, time, and healing
Neuroscientist Michael Friedlander will open the Maury Strauss Distinguished Public Lecture Series on Thursday at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute with insights into the brain’s ability to tune its own networks for learning and in response to injury.
The neuroscience side of Michael Friedlander, executive director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, will be in the spotlight when he delivers the opening lecture of the Maury Strauss Distinguished Public Lecture Series at the institute on Thursday.
His talk, “Conducting the Neuro-Symphony in the Brain — Space, Time, and Calcium,” will give people a glimpse of his latest research, which revealed for the first time how the cadence of electrical signaling impacts the brain’s “plasticity” — its ability to modify the fidelity of its own internal communications and to adapt after injury — a finding that could help in efforts to treat brain disorders.
In addition, Friedlander will explore the critical role of calcium in this plasticity and how the intricate interplay of anatomy, timing, and chemistry come together to orchestrate the brain's symphony, harmonizing its ability to learn and recover.
Friedlander is known for his ability to build research teams and for energizing the biotech industry in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. As vice president for health sciences and technology, he played a key role recently in Virginia Tech receiving support from the state biomedical research consortium with the University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, and others.
He joined Virginia Tech in 2010 as the inaugural director of the research institute after serving as the Department of Neuroscience chair at Baylor College of Medicine at the Texas Medical Center in Houston — the largest medical complex in the world, spanning over 1,345 acres with more than 60 institutions and 106,000 employees.
Before that, Friedlander was a professor and founding chair of the Department of Neurobiology and the first Evelyn McKnight Professor of Learning and Memory in Aging at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, during Birmingham's transformation from a declining industrial town to a capital of biomedical innovation.
And his expansive career in biomedical research and team-building was sparked by a simple question about the effects of temperature changes on the nervous system and the brain, long before climate change became a hot topic across the planet.
Friedlander was a graduate student in the laboratory of C. Ladd Prosser, a National Academy of Science member who was considered a giant in the field of comparative animal physiology.
To learn about the effects of temperature changes, the researchers looked to the common goldfish. From such humble beginnings, they published a study in The Journal of Comparative Physiology in 1976 on moderate temperature change in goldfish that today, nearly 50 years later, stands as a landmark paper in temperature acclimation brain research.
This sparked his fundamental interest in how the brain is capable of changing its internal cellular communications machinery in response to a variety of challenges including learning, early life experience, and injury.
Years later, that work led Friedlander and colleagues to a deeper understanding of how Antarctic fishes respond to acute thermal stress, revealing species-specific behaviors that may help these unique species endure the effects of climate change.
“Neuroscience is at the heart of my scientific passion,” said Friedlander, who is also the senior dean for research at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and a professor of biological sciences in the College of Science. “My work has given me the opportunity to develop collaborations and friendships across the globe. One constant over my entire career has been my participation in the Society for Neuroscience, including its annual conference. As a member since its earliest days in the 1970s, looking back, I can confidently say that the field of neuroscience has never been more vibrant or full of potential to benefit humankind. The discoveries of recent years are pushing boundaries across multiple disciplines in ways we couldn't have imagined when I first started.”
His presentation is free and open to the public at 2 Riverside Circle in Roanoke at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute on Thursday, Sept. 12. Doors open at 5 p.m. with refreshments and the presentation begins at 5:30 p.m. The lecture is also available via Zoom and YouTube.
The lecture series is a cornerstone of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. It launched during the 2010-11 academic year and, since 2018, has been supported by a donation from longtime Roanoke resident Maury Strauss, who passed away in June.
Friedlander completed a bachelor's degree at Florida State University, a doctorate in physiology and biophysics at the University of Illinois, and postdoctoral training at the University of Virginia.
He serves on multiple boards, including the Virginia Rare Disease Council, Virginia Early Childhood Foundation Board, the Children’s National Hospital Research, Education and Innovation Board, the Valleys Innovation Council, the Virginia Bio Academic Board, the Virginia Biosciences Health Research Corporation Board, and is a member of the Go Virginia Region 2 Council.
Friedlander is an Alfred P. Sloane Foundation Neuroscience Fellow, a recipient of the American College of Physicians’ William C. Menninger Memorial Award for Distinguished Contributions to Mental Health Research, the University of Illinois Distinguished Alumnus Award in Physiology, and has been elected as a distinguished service member of the Association of American Medical Colleges, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a distinguished scientist of the Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine.
