Jeff Lichtman

About

Jeff Lichtman is the Jeremy R. Knowles Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and the Santiago Ramón y Cajal Professor of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. His research focuses on the mechanisms underlying synaptic competition between neurons that innervate the same target cell. These competitive interactions are responsible for sharpening neural connection patterns during development and may also play a role in learning and memory formation. His laboratory studies synaptic rearrangements by visualizing synaptic competition directly in living animals using modern optical imaging techniques. The research concentrates on neuromuscular junctions in accessible mouse neck muscles, utilizing transgenic animals and labeling strategies to monitor individual nerve terminals and postsynaptic specializations over hours or months. Lichtman's work has contributed significantly to understanding synaptic structure and function, with numerous publications in the field.

Research topics

• Biology
• Neuroscience
• Computer Science
• Evolutionary biology
• Optics
• Physics
• Medicine
• Psychology
• Anatomy
• Cell biology

Selected publications

• Connectomes across development reveal principles of brain maturation

  Nature · 2021 · 434 citations

  DOI

• A petavoxel fragment of human cerebral cortex reconstructed at nanoscale resolution

  Science · 2024 · 309 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  To fully understand how the human brain works, knowledge of its structure at high resolution is needed. Presented here is a computationally intensive reconstruction of the ultrastructure of a cubic millimeter of human temporal cortex that was surgically removed to gain access to an underlying epileptic focus. It contains about 57,000 cells, about 230 millimeters of blood vessels, and about 150 million synapses and comprises 1.4 petabytes. Our analysis showed that glia outnumber neurons 2:1, olig…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A connectomic study of a petascale fragment of human cerebral cortex

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2021 · 279 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract We acquired a rapidly preserved human surgical sample from the temporal lobe of the cerebral cortex. We stained a 1 mm 3 volume with heavy metals, embedded it in resin, cut more than 5000 slices at ∼30 nm and imaged these sections using a high-speed multibeam scanning electron microscope. We used computational methods to render the three-dimensional structure containing 57,216 cells, hundreds of millions of neurites and 133.7 million synaptic connections. The 1.4 petabyte electron micro…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Mind of a Mouse

  Cell · 2020 · 189 citations

  DOI

• Mapping of neuronal and glial primary cilia contactome and connectome in the human cerebral cortex

  Neuron · 2023 · 85 citations

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• A Tool for Synapse-level Circuit Analysis of Human Cerebral Cortex Specimens.

  NIH · $2.4M · 2021–2026

• A Facility to Generate Connectomics Information

  NIH · $6.5M · 2018–2025

• NIH Grant R01NS076467

  NIH · $9.4M · 2016

Frequent coauthors

• Hanspeter Pfister

  Harvard University

  97 shared

• Richard Schalek

  Harvard University

  71 shared

• Daniel R. Berger

  51 shared

• Joshua R. Sanes

  Harvard University Press

  48 shared

• Markus Hadwiger

  47 shared

• Johanna Beyer

  47 shared

• Won-Ki Jeong

  45 shared

• Narayanan Kasthuri

  University of Chicago

  38 shared

Labs

• Jeff LichtmanPI

Similar researchers at Harvard University

• Nathanael Grayh-185
• David Livingstonh-177
• Stephen Harrisonh-162