Rui Costa

Rui Costa

Neuron Q&A Rui Costa In an interview with Neuron, Rui Costa discusses his interest in the mechanisms and circuits underlying spontaneous movement gen...

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Neuron

Q&A Rui Costa In an interview with Neuron, Rui Costa discusses his interest in the mechanisms and circuits underlying spontaneous movement generation. He contemplates the degeneracy of circuits controlling action in the brain and discusses how interpreting paintings made him a better scientist. Rui Costa studies the neurobiology of action in health and disease. His laboratory uses genetic, electrophysiological, optical, and behavioral approaches to investigate the mechanisms underlying the generation and learning of novel actions. He also studies disorders that lead to problems with action selection, compulsive behaviors, and habits. He performed his PhD studies with Dr. Alcino Silva at UCLA from 1998 to 2002, followed by postdoctoral work with Dr. Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University. He became a Section Chief at the National Institutes of Health in 2006 and in 2009 became an Investigator of the Champalimaud Neuroscience Program. In 2012, he became an International Early Career Scientist of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and received the Young Investigator Award from the Society for Neuroscience. In 2014, he was elected a member of EMBO and was knighted with the Order of Sant’Iago da Espada from the President of Portugal. He was also awarded the Young Investigator Career Award from the Jean-Louis Jeantet Foundation. He served as Deputy Director of the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme from 2011 to 2013 and became Director of CF Research in 2014. He was a chair of the Programme Committee of FENS from 2014 to 2016. In 2016, he became a Professor at Columbia University. He is the President of the American-Portuguese Biomedical Research Fund. What do you think are the big questions to be answered next in your field? One of the most fascinating questions for me is what are the mechanisms and circuits underlying self-paced or spontaneous movement generation. What drives an animal to spontaneously move when there are not explicit changes in the environment or internal state? Under506 Neuron 91, August 3, 2016

to control, our perspective on behavior in general, and human behavior in particular, would change. To tackle your favorite research question, is there a tool that either needs to be developed or is currently available that could be implemented in a novel way? The capacity to tag and manipulate synapses and cells that are active at a very particular point in time, with subsecond resolution. Rui Costa Champalimaud Research, Champalimaud Center for the Unknown

standing the neural mechanisms underlying self-paced initiation of movement will permit us to understand how we select what to do or not to do; what to try in explorative trial and error; and also when to try it. Another fascinating question follows: if we initiate a particular action and we obtain a positive outcome, how do we reinforce or increase the likelihood of entering again the particular neural patterns that lead to that specific action? And if we manage to learn and consolidate a skill, how do we retrieve a motor memory in a spontaneous manner? Which aspect of science, your field or in general, do you wish the general public knew more about? I wish people knew more about degeneracy of the circuits controlling action in the brain. Degeneracy is the capacity for very similar actions to be triggered or controlled by different brain circuits, depending on the circumstances that drive the behavior. We tend to judge others based on their behavior: if we would comprehend that identical behaviors could be triggered by very different circuits, which are sometimes very difficult

What has been the highlight of your career? I am an optimist, and so I always think the best moments are the ones to come. I believe the highlight is in the future. And this drives me—the idea that the best is still to come. Who were your key early influences? My PhD and Postdoc advisors were a great influence. But early in graduate school I met an immunologist, Maria de Sousa, who really had a big influence on me. She used to take us into museums and ask us to stare at a painting for a long time and describe everything that we saw. This taught us how to look, how to see things that had been missed, how to go beyond the obvious. What’s your favorite experiment? I love being alone on a weekend or at night and listening to neurons fire in behaving animals, while following the neurons on an oscilloscope. I especially love when I traverse areas that almost no one has ever recorded from. You hear all kinds of sounds, from popcorn to a rattle. What motivated you to become a scientist? It is interesting to think about this. I often think scientists are people that cannot

Neuron

Q&A not ask. I felt a drive for wanting to find out how things work since I was little. But I did not know there was a job where you could get paid to do that. I feel so privileged. What is your view on big data-gathering collaborations as opposed to hypothesis-driven research by small groups? Clearly, some experiments have to be done in collaboration between many laboratories. It is difficult to think about the collection of large connectivity datasets by a small group of people. But ideas or hypotheses can go a long way into providing understanding of the principles underlying the function of complex systems, even before we know all the details about their components. So I think both are necessary. But I take more pleasure in thinking about general principles with small groups of people, and testing them. Many complex problems were enlightened by one idea or critical experiment.

What do you think are the biggest problems/challenge science as a whole is facing today? There is an idea that scientific training is for academic jobs and that we are training way more people than there are jobs available. Scientific training and analytical thinking are important to solve many problems, from societal problems, to banking problems, to management problems. People that receive a PhD in science do on average better in nonacademic jobs than colleagues without science training. I feel there is a lot of unnecessary discouragement about doing scientific training that drives brilliant minds away. How do you view the level of crosstalk between disciplines (for example, physics, mathematics, engineering, humanities, and social sciences)? I view it as fundamental. There are no disciplines that per se are sufficient to enlighten the functioning of the brain.

I feel that discovery usually happens when different views on the same subject reveal new angles. How do you find inspiration? I find inspiration in many different things. A great source is other scientists that I admire. I like to know how they lived their lives, what drove them, how they satisfied their curiosity. I also find inspiration from artists and athletes. Dedication and passion are critical and should be cultivated. What do you do when you’re not in the lab? I like to dedicate time to my family and also relax with sports or biking. Often what I do is cook for others as this relaxes me. What career paths did you consider other than a scientist? Ahhh, I considered acting or writing a long time ago. But now probably cooking. I take real pleasure in cooking. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2016.07.027

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