James H. Marshel, Ph.D.

James H. Marshel, Ph.D., received his undergraduate degrees in Molecular and Cell Biology, and Psychology from the University of California Berkeley, and his Ph.D. in Neurosciences from the University of California San Diego. He completed postdoctoral training in Bioengineering at Stanford University.

For his Ph.D., Dr. Marshel trained under the supervision of Ed Callaway, Ph.D. at the Salk Institute where he revealed functional and structural neural circuit properties of the mouse visual system with single cell resolution across large populations. He leveraged genetically modified, circuit tracing rabies viruses to characterize synaptic inputs to single targeted neurons (Marshel et al., Neuron 2010). He later mapped precise functional organization of multiple brain areas in the mouse visual system, including several cortical areas and thalamus using novel in vivo calcium imaging approaches (Marshel* et al., Neuron 2011, 2012).

Dr. Marshel subsequently joined the laboratory of Karl Deisseroth, M.D., Ph.D., at Stanford University, as a postdoctoral fellow in Bioengineering, and later as a senior scientist and scientific program manager. Dr. Marshel contributed to leading several projects focused on developing and applying all optical recording and optogenetic technologies to reveal casual relationships between specific neurons and neural projections in a variety of brain systems and behaviors. He discovered an anterior cingulate to hippocampus pathway that recruits specific memory dynamics and contextual memory retrieval (Rajasethupathy*, Sankaran*, Marshel* et al., Nature 2015), and feeding- and socially-related subnetworks in orbitofrontal cortex that bidirectionally modulate feeding behavior, applying single cell optogenetic stimulation to manipulate behavior for the first time (Jennings*, Kim*, Marshel* et al., Nature 2019). Dr. Marshel helped lead the development and application of large scale all optical holographic approaches to achieve kilohertz stimulation of targeted neuronal ensembles within populations of thousands of recorded neurons spanning multiple cortical layers. He applied this to discover connectivity patterns between visually-tuned neuronal ensembles that amplify specific neural activity and drive visual behavior (Marshel* et al., Science 2019).

Dr. Marshel joined the faculty at Burke Neurological Institute and Weill Cornell Medicine in 2023, where he is expanding knowledge and approaches to reveal neural circuit mechanisms of visual perception and learned sensory behaviors.