Bldg 49 Rm 2A35
49 Convent Dr
Bethesda MD 20814
Dr. Wagner joined NINDS as a Stadtman Investigator in August 2021. Before joining the NIH, Dr. Wagner studied bioengineering at Harvard University, researching human motor control with Maurice Smith during a combined B.A./M.S., then obtained a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Stanford University under Mark Schnitzer, as well as postdoctoral training with Liqun Luo also at Stanford, developing novel strategies to study cortex-cerebellum circuitry in learning and behaving mice.
Click here to visit Dr. Wagner's lab page.
How do we learn to play the piano or tennis — complex and unnatural skills that aren’t linked to the evolution of our species? These are examples of our remarkable knack for general learning. In tackling this mystery, we’ve homed in on the two brain learning sites that make up ~99% of all human neurons: the cortex and cerebellum. Cortex and cerebellum differ in nearly every way: dissimilar types of neurons, wired into contrasting network architectures, using different learning mechanisms. Yet, somehow, cortex and cerebellum became inextricably linked — they’ve expanded together over mammalian evolution and interconnect by universally conserved pathways. We hypothesize that cortex and cerebellum have joined forces to implement algorithms that lie at the heart of our talent for general learning. We therefore devise new strategies to directly observe and perturb cortex-cerebellum interactions while animals learn novel skills over weeks. We believe that cracking the cortex-cerebellum algorithm will remake our understanding of the normal brain and of brain dysfunction, with potential applications as far afield as A.I.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Martha Garcia-Garcia, Ph.D.
Ph.D., M.S., Biomedical Engineering, Univ of Toronto
B.S., Biomedical Engineering, Univ Iberoamericana
Yingtao Liu, Ph.D.
Ph.D., M.S., Biophysics, University of Tokyo
B.S., Astrophysics, Peking University
Students
Benjamin Filio
Ph.D student, NIH-Brown University Neuroscience Program
B.S., Neuroscience, Wesleyan Univ
Post-baccalaureate Fellows
Dariel Cordero
B.S., University of Puerto Rico, Aguadilla
Subhiksha Srinivasan
B.A., Biochemistry & Neuroscience, Lawrence University
Alumni
Tobi Akinwale
Masters Student, Bioinformatics, Johns Hopkins
B.S., Cell. Molec. Biol., Towson Univ
Lina Takemaru
Ph.D Student, UPenn Computational Biology
M.S., B.S., Statistics, Cornell Univ
Akash Kapoor
M.D. Student, Columbia University
B.S., Neuroscience, UCLA
Samantha Berg
Ph.D. student, Clinical Psych, Univ MD Baltimore County
B.S., Psychology, Univ Central Florida
Casey Paton
M.D. student, Univ. of Rochester
M.A., Neuroscience, Fisk Univ
B.S., Human Biol Health & Soc, Cornell Univ
Principal publications
MJ Wagner, J Savall, O Hernandez, G Mel, H Inan, O Rumyantsev, J Lecoq, TH Kim, JZ Li, C Ramakrishnan, K Deisseroth, L Luo, S Ganguli, MJ Schnitzer. A neural circuit state change underlying skilled movements. Cell 184(14), 3731-3747 (2021). 10.1016/j.cell.2021.06.001
SA Shuster✱, MJ Wagner✱, N Pan-Doh, J Ren, SM Grutzner, KT Beier, TH Kim, MJ Schnitzer, L Luo. The relationship between birth timing, circuit wiring, and physiological response properties of cerebellar granule cells. PNAS 118(23) (2021). 10.1073/pnas.2101826118
MJ Wagner, L Luo. Neocortex-cerebellum circuits for cognitive processing. Trends in Neurosciences 43(1), 42–54 (2020). 10.1016/j.tins.2019.11.002
MJ Wagner, J Savall, TH Kim, MJ Schnitzer, L Luo. Skilled reaching tasks for head-fixed mice using a robotic manipulandum. Nature Protocols 15, 1237–1254 (2020). 10.1038/s41596-019-0286-8
MJ Wagner✱, TH Kim✱, J Kadmon, ND Nguyen, S Ganguli, MJ Schnitzer, L Luo. Shared cortex-cerebellum dynamics in the execution and learning of a motor task. Cell 177, 669–682 (2019). 10.1016/j.cell.2019.02.019
MJ Wagner✱, TH Kim✱, J Savall, MJ Schnitzer, L Luo. Cerebellar granule cells encode the expectation of reward. Nature 544, 96–100 (2017). 10.1038/nature21726
Coverage: Nature Rev. Neurosci. 18, 263 (2017); Nature Neurosci. 20, 633-634 (2017); Current Biology 27, 415-418 (2017); Trends in Neurosci 12:874-877 (2018).
MJ Wagner & MA Smith. Shared internal models for feedforward and feedback control. Journal of Neuroscience 28(42), 10663-10673 (2008). 10.1523/jneurosci.5479-07.2008
Coverage: Nature 456, 679 (2008)
Additional publications
Rudolph, S., Badura, A., Lutzu, S., Pathak, S.S., Thieme, A., Verpeut, J.L., Wagner, M.J., Yang, Y.M. and Fioravante, D. Cognitive-Affective Functions of the Cerebellum. J Neurosci, 43(45), 7554-7564 (2023). 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1451-23.2023
S Muscinelli, MJ Wagner, A Litwin-Kumar. Optimal routing to cerebellum-like structures. Nature Neuroscience 26(9):1630-1641 (2023). 10.1038/s41593-023-01403-7
T Li, TM Fu, KK Wong, H Li, Q Xie, DJ Luginbuhl, MJ Wagner, E Betzig, L Luo. Cellular bases of olfactory circuit assembly revealed by systematic time-lapse imaging. Cell 184(20):5107-21 (2021). 10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.030
DT Pederick, JH Lui, EC Gingrich, C Xu, MJ Wagner, Y Liu, Z He, SR Quake, L Luo. Reciprocal repulsions instruct the precise assembly of parallel hippocampal networks. Science 372(6546):1068-73 (2021). 10.1126/science.abg1774
Y Takeo, A Shuster, L Jiang, M Hu, DJ Luginbuhl, T Rülicke, X Contreras, S Hipponmeyer, MJ Wagner, S Ganguli, L Luo. GluD2 and Cbln1-mediated competitive synaptogenesis shapes the dendritic arbors of cerebellar Purkinje cells. Neuron 14(20), 933-8 (2021). 10.1016/j.neuron.2020.11.028
JH Lui, ND Nguyen, SM Grutzner, S Darmanis, D Peixoto, MJ Wagner, WE Allen, JM Kebschull, EB Richman, J Ren, WT Newsome, SR Quake, L Luo. Differential encoding in prefrontal cortex projection neuron classes across cognitive tasks. Cell 184(2), 489-506 (2021). 10.1016/j.cell.2020.11.046
T Zhang, O Hernandez, R Chrapkiewicz, A. Shai, MJ Wagner, Y Zhang, C Wu, JZ Li, M Inoue, Y Gong, B Ahanonu, H Zeng, H Bito, MJ Schnitzer. Kilohertz two-photon brain imaging in awake mice. Nature Methods 16(11), 1119-1122 (2019). 10.1038/s41592-019-0597-2
MJ Wagner. Cognitive signaling in cerebellar granule cells. Neuropsychopharmacology 43, 222-223 (2018). 10.1038/npp.2017.186
Y Gong, MJ Wagner, JZ Li, MJ Schnitzer. Imaging neural spiking in brain tissue using FRET-opsin protein voltage sensors. Nature Communications 5, 3674 (2014). 10.1038/ncomms4674
LC Parra, C Christoforou, AD Gerson, M Dryholm, A Luo, MJ Wagner, MG Philiastides, P Sajda. Spatiotemporal linear decoding of brain state. IEEE Signal Processing Magazine 25, 107-115 (2008). 10.1109/msp.2008.4408447