Page 23 - Rappaport Institute Magazine 2024

BRAIN SCIENCE
20-21
Maintaining brain connections, their composition and their individual properties
Changes to synaptic connections (synapses) driven by physiologically relevant inputs are considered a key mechanism for embedding information in neuronal networks. Recent work by our group and others has revealed, however, that synapses also change spontaneously, even in the absence of external cues. Our group studies the processes that drive spontaneous synaptic changes, the forces that constrain them, the manners by which synapses are nevertheless maintained and the potential consequences of spontaneous changes - from forgetting to creativity.
Selected Publications
ˆ Minerbi A, Kahana R, Goldfeld L, Kaufman M, Marom S, Ziv NE. (2009) Long-term relationships between synaptic tenacity, synaptic remodeling, and network activity. PLoS Biol. 7(6):e1000136.
ˆ Hakim V, Cohen LD, Zuchman R, Ziv T, Ziv NE. (2016) The effects of proteasomal inhibition on synaptic proteostasis. EMBO J. 35 :2238-2262.
ˆ Dvorkin R, Ziv NE. (2016) Relative Contributions of Specific Activity Histories and Spontaneous Processes to Size Remodeling of Glutamatergic Synapses. PLoS Biol. 14(10):e1002572.
ˆ Hazan L, Ziv NE. (2020) Activity Dependent and Independent Determinants of Synaptic Size Diversity. J Neurosci. 40:2828-2848.
ˆ Cohen LD, Ziv T, Ziv NE. (2022) Synapse integrity and function: Dependence on protein synthesis and identification of potential failure points. Front Mol Neurosci. 15:1038614.
Grants and Awards
2018-2020 German Israel Fund (GIF). The Roles of N-Terminal Domain Ubiquitination in Mutated Huntingtin. with Aaron Ciechanover (Technion), Olaf Riess (Tubingen). 2019-2024 Israel Science Foundation (ISF). Quantitative relationships between synaptic remodeling and signal propagation in neuronal networks.
The Neurobiology of Forgetting.
2021-2025 Deutsch-Israelische Projektkooperation (DIP) with Naama Brenner (Technion) Simon Rumpel (Mainz), Nils Brose (Goettingen), Matthias Kaschube (Frankfurt), Camin Dean (Berlin)
2023-2028 Israel Science Foundation (ISF). Determinants of synaptic tenacity. Collaborators
Craig Garner (Stanford, DZNE), Eckart Gundelfinger (Magdeburg), Daniella Dietrich (Magdeburg)
noamz@technion.ac.il
Noam Ziv Lab
Noam E. Ziv ,PhD Professor of Neurobiology
PhD, 1994 – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Postsynaptic sites along the branches (dendrites) of one nerve cell (red dots) contacted by presynaptic sites of an axon of a second cell (blue dots).