John Birmingham

Professor

John Birmingham received an A.B. degree in Physics from Princeton University in 1989. In 1996, he received a Ph.D. from the University California at Berkeley, where he studied the heat capacity of quantum adsorbates and the far-infrared properties of high-Tc superconductors. After graduate school, he spent four years as a post-doctoral fellow at the Volen Center for Complex Systems at Brandeis University where he worked in an interdisciplinary neuroscience laboratory. Professor Birmingham uses physiological and computational approaches to study how sensory neurons encode information in trains of voltage impulses, and how the codes themselves can be modified to improve sensor performance.

Publications

Ralston BN, Flagg LQ, Faggin E, Birmingham JT. Incorporating spike-rate adaptation into a rate code in mathematical and biological neurons. J Neuropys. 115: 2501-2518, 2016.
Shimoide A, Kimball I, Gutierrez AA, Lim H, Yoon I, Birmingham JT, Singh R, Fuse, M. Quantification and analysis of ecydis in the hornworn, Manduca sexta. Invert Neurosci. 13: 45-55, 2013.
Billimoria CP, Dicaprio RA, Prinz AA, Quintanar-Zilinskas V, Birmingham JT. Modifying spiking precision in conductance-based neuronal models. Network. 24: 1-26, 2013.
Steven W. Suljak, Christopher M. Rose, Christelle Sabatier, Thuc Le, Quoc Trieu, Derek R. Verley, Alexandra M. Lewis, and John T. Birmingham, "Enhancement of muscle contraction in the stomach of the crab Cancer borealis: a possible hormonal role for GABA," Biological Bulletin 218, 293-302 (2010).
Derek R. Verley, Vu Doan, Quoc Trieu, Daniel I. Messinger, and John T. Birmingham, "Characteristic differences in modulation of stomatogastric musculature by a neuropeptide in three species of Cancercrabs," Journal of Comparative Physiology A, 194, 879-886 (2008).
T. Le, D. R. Verley, J. M. Goaillard, D. I. Messinger, A. E. Christie and J. T. Birmingham, "Bistable behavior in the axon of a crustacean motor neuron," Journal of Neurophysiology, 95 1356, (2006).