Diversity in Life Sciences

Distributed computations involving multiple brain regions underlie complex behaviors such as social interactions. Dr. Nicholas Frost seeks to understand how multineuron activity which underlies these computations is altered in neurodevelopmental disorders and contributes to abnormal behavior. Throughout his scientific career Dr. Frost has utilized light microscopy to probe dynamic processes within the nervous system. Dr. Frost completed his MD/PhD at the University of Maryland School of Medicine with Dr. Thomas Blanpied. There he collaborated with Dr. Eric Betzig to develop super-resolution techniques to measure actin polymerization at the synapse of living neurons with unprecedented resolution. Following completion of residency in adult neurology at UCSF in 2016, his postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Dr. Vikaas Sohal focused on two questions: First, how does abnormal synaptic function alter emergent properties of cortical networks and impair the encoding of relevant information during social behavior? Second, how is information relevant to different types of behavioral information encoded in parallel during behaviors? He started his laboratory at the University of Utah in 2021. His lab uses transcriptomic and optical imaging methods to define heterogeneous cell populations which compose cortical representations of social, contextual, and anxiety-related information, and to understand how the dynamic recruitment and composition of these ensembles are altered in disease. As a neurologist he sees patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.