Julijana Gjorgjieva

Education

  • 2007-present: PhD student, DAMTP
  • 2006-2007: Part III Maths (CASM), DAMTP
  • 2002-2006: BSc Mathematics, Harvey Mudd College

Research

I am a member of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. I work with Dr Stephen Eglen on the development of connections in the nervous system. In particular, I am interested in the role of spontaneous acitivity in self-organization.

I have worked on how retinal waves, spotaneously generated in the retina before eye opening in mouse, instruct the segregation of functionally distinct retinal ganglion cells (ON-center and OFF-center) in higher brain structures such as the lateral geniculate nucleus. I have used activity coincidence detection mechanisms, for instance spike- and burst-time-dependent plasticity rules.

In collaboration with Dr Jean-Pascal Pfister from the Department of Engineering, I have developed an analytical framework to study a particular plasticity rule, based on triplet of spikes. This rule uses not only firing rates and pairwise correlations, but also third-order correlations to regulate synaptic strength.  

I have also studied the role of spontaneous activity in the assembly of the circuit for crawling in Drosophila larva. It is known that a central pattern generator underlies this crawling, in addition to input from sensory organs to make the behavior more robust. I have examined how local mechanisms (Hebbian plasticity and homeostasis) can regulate the global connectivity of a network resulting in crawling behavour. This work is in collaboration with the Bate lab in Zoology, and particularly Dr Felix Evers.

Publications

  • J. Gjorgjieva, T. Toyoizumi and S. J. Eglen and J (2009). Burst-time-dependent Plasticity Robustly Guides ON/OFF Segregation in the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus. PLoS Comp Biol 5(12): e1000618. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000618
  • S. J. Eglen and J. Gjorgjieva (2009). Self-organisation in the Developing Nervous System: Theoretical Models. HFSP Journal 3:176-185.
  • J. Gjorgjieva and J. Jacobsen (2007). Turing Patterns on Growing Spheres: The Exponential Case. Discrete Contin. Dyn. Syst. Series A, suppl: 436-445.
  • J. Gjorgjieva, K. Smith, G. Chowell, F. Sanchez, J. Snyder, C. Castillo-Chavez (2005).  The Role of Vaccination in the Control of SARS. Math. Biosci. Eng. 2: 753-769.