Vikram Jakkamsetti, Ph.D.
Instructor

Vikram Jakkamsetti is an Instructor in the Department of Neurology and Neurotherapeutics at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He works in Dr. Juan Pascual’s lab with a primary goal of exploring mechanistic links between energy metabolism and neuronal electrophysiology, for providing insights relevant to correcting seizures and intellectual disability in related pediatric encephalopathies. He also collaborates with lab colleagues on projects aiming to find the molecular, synaptic and neurophysiological underpinnings of rodent behavior impacted by mutations.

Vikram earned his medical degree (MBBS) and completed a residency in Internal Medicine (MD) at South Gujarat University in India. He then received an MS (Applied Cognition and Neuroscience) and a PhD (Cognition and Neuroscience) degree at The University of Texas at Dallas. During his PhD training in Dr. Michael Kilgard’s lab, he examined the impact of behavioral experience and pharmacology in inducing experience-dependent reorganization of cerebral cortex maps in rodent auditory cortex.

For postdoctoral training at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dr. Kimberly Huber’s Lab, he studied how a brief novel experience primes only activated hippocampus neurons for subsequent synaptic plasticity, before moving to Dr. Juan Pascual’s lab.

Undergraduate

South Gujarat University (1998), Medicine

Medical School

South Gujarat University (2002), Internal Medicine

Graduate School

University of Texas at Dallas (2008), Neuroscience

• Behavioral Learning and Synaptic Plasticity
• Energy Metabolism and Epilepsy
• Machine Learning Applications in Neuroscience/Neurology
• Systems/Cellular/Synaptic Neurophysiology
• Translational Neuroscience

Featured Publications

Brain metabolism modulates neuronal excitability in a mouse model of pyruvate dehydrogenase deficiency.

Jakkamsetti V, Marin-Valencia I, Ma Q, Good LB, Terrill T, Rajasekaran K, Pichumani K, Khemtong C, Hooshyar MA, Sundarrajan C, Patel MS, Bachoo RM, Malloy CR, Pascual JM Sci Transl Med 2019 Feb 11 480

Experience-induced Arc/Arg3.1 primes CA1 pyramidal neurons for metabotropic glutamate receptor-dependent long-term synaptic depression.

Jakkamsetti V, Tsai NP, Gross C, Molinaro G, Collins KA, Nicoletti F, Wang KH, Osten P, Bassell GJ, Gibson JR, Huber KM Neuron 2013 Oct 80 1 72-9

Altered cerebellar connectivity in autism and cerebellar-mediated rescue of autism-related behaviors in mice.

Stoodley CJ, D'Mello AM, Ellegood J, Jakkamsetti V, Liu P, Nebel MB, Gibson JM, Kelly E, Meng F, Cano CA, Pascual JM, Mostofsky SH, Lerch JP, Tsai PT Nat. Neurosci. 2017 Dec 20 12 1744-1751

Oxidation of [U-(13) C]glucose in the human brain at 7T under steady state conditions.

Cheshkov S, Dimitrov IE, Jakkamsetti V, Good L, Kelly D, Rajasekaran K, DeBerardinis RJ, Pascual JM, Sherry AD, Malloy CR Magn Reson Med 2017 Jan

Different timescales for the neural coding of consonant and vowel sounds.

Perez CA, Engineer CT, Jakkamsetti V, Carraway RS, Perry MS, Kilgard MP Cereb. Cortex 2013 Mar 23 3 670-83

Inverted-U function relating cortical plasticity and task difficulty.

Engineer ND, Engineer CT, Reed AC, Pandya PK, Jakkamsetti V, Moucha R, Kilgard MP Neuroscience 2012 Mar 205 81-90

Reorganization in processing of spectral and temporal input in the rat posterior auditory field induced by environmental enrichment.

Jakkamsetti V, Chang KQ, Kilgard MP J. Neurophysiol. 2012 Mar 107 5 1457-75

Cortical map plasticity improves learning but is not necessary for improved performance.

Reed A, Riley J, Carraway R, Carrasco A, Perez C, Jakkamsetti V, Kilgard MP Neuron 2011 Apr 70 1 121-31

Effect of the environment on the dendritic morphology of the rat auditory cortex.

Bose M, Muñoz-Llancao P, Roychowdhury S, Nichols JA, Jakkamsetti V, Porter B, Byrapureddy R, Salgado H, Kilgard MP, Aboitiz F, Dagnino-Subiabre A, Atzori M Synapse 2010 Feb 64 2 97-110

Cortical activity patterns predict speech discrimination ability.

Engineer CT, Perez CA, Chen YH, Carraway RS, Reed AC, Shetake JA, Jakkamsetti V, Chang KQ, Kilgard MP Nat. Neurosci. 2008 May 11 5 603-8

 Featured Books

Auditory Environment, Stress, and Brain Plasticity. In The Neurobiology of Stress: an Evolutionary Approach

Nichols JA, Bose M, Jakkamsetti VP, Kilgard MP, Atzori M. (2007). Research Signpost

Pyruvate Dehydrogenase, Pyruvate Carboxylase,Krebs Cycle and Mitochondrial Transport Disorders. In Rosenberg's Molecular and Genetic Basis of Neurological and Psychiatric Disease, 6th Edition, Volume 1

Jakkamsetti V, Marin-Valencia I, Ma Q, Pascual JM (2020). Elsevier

• Society for Neuroscience (2004)
• Association of Physicians of Gujarat (2002)