biology

Leslie M. Kay

Leslie M. Kay is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Leslie M. Kay rather than just read about it. In short: Leslie M. Kay is an American neuroscientist and a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago.

Key takeaways

Leslie M. Kay belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Leslie M. Kay to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Leslie M. Kay from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Leslie M. Kay is an American neuroscientist and a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago. Her research studies the neurophysiology of the olfactory bulb and how behavioral context affects sensory processing. Kay received her undergraduate education at St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe) and obtained a PhD in biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley. She completed a postdoctoral research project at the California Institute of Technology under Gilles Laurent after graduating from her PhD program in 1995. She was appointed in 2000 as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago. From 2008 to 2014 she served as the director of the Institute for Mind and Biology at the University of Chicago.

Career Kay graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Liberal Arts from St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After graduating from St. John's College, Kay worked on the GenBank project at Los Alamos National Laboratory until 1985. Kay began her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley in 1985, but took a break from 1986 to 1990, during which she worked as an analyst and programmer and as a scientific reviewer for GenBank at Intelligenetics. Kay completed her dissertation research and received a PhD in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkey in 1995 under advisor Walter Jackson Freeman III. Her dissertation was titled Dynamic Interaction of Olfactory and Limbic Systems during Olfactory Perception. From 1995 to 2000, Kay was a postdoctoral fellow in Biology and Computational Neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology. During her postdoctoral training in advisor Gilles Laurent's lab at Caltech, she studied how the responses of mitral cells in the olfactory bulb were affected by the behavioral context of the odor. At The University of Chicago, Kay served as director of the Institute for Mind & Biology from 2008 to 2014 and as the chair of the Integrative Neuroscience graduate program from 2014 to 2016. She is also a member of the Grossman Institute for Neuroscience at The University of Chicago. Kay is an editor for multiple peer-reviewed scientific journals, including Behavioral Neuroscience and the Journal of Neurophysiology. For her research on how context reconfigures neural systems, Kay received a DARPA grant in 2018. Kay has also received multiple NIH grants for her research through the NIDCD. Additionally, Kay was invited to speak as part of the University of Florida's Center for Smell and Taste Seminar Series in 2017 and gave a presentation about neural oscillations and context in olfactory processing.

Personal life Kay is married to her wife of nearly 30 years, with whom she has two adult children. She is a member of 500 Queer Scientists and promotes LGBTQ visibility in science.

Selected publications Kay, L.M. and Freeman, W.J. (1998) Bidirectional processing in the olfactory-limbic axis during olfactory behavior. Behavioral Neuroscience, 112(3): 541-553. Kay, L.M. and Laurent, G. (1999) Odor- and context-dependent modulation of mitral cell firing in behaving rats. Nature Neuroscience, 2(11): 1003-1009. Nusser, Z., Kay, L.M., Laurent, G., Homanics, G.E., Mody, I. (2001) Disruption of GABAA receptor mediated inhibition of GABAergic interneurons leads to increased synchrony of the olfactory bulb network. J. Neurophysiology 86(6): 2823-2833. Beshel, J., Kopell, N. and Kay, L.M. (2007) Olfactory bulb gamma oscillations are enhanced with task demands. Journal of Neuroscience, 27(31): 8358-8365. Kay, L.M., Beshel, J., Brea, J., Martin, C., Rojas-Líbano, D. & Kopell, N. (2009) Olfactory oscillations: the what, how and what for, Trends in Neurosciences, 32(4): 207-214. Kay, L.M. and Beshel, J. (2010) A beta oscillation network supports a gamma oscillation mode in the rat olfactory system during a 2-alternative choice odor discrimination task. Journal of Neurophysiology, 104(2):829-839. Rojas-Líbano, D., Frederick, D.E., Egaña, J.I. and Kay, L.M. (2014) The olfactory bulb theta rhythm follows all frequencies of diaphragmatic respiration in the freely behaving rat. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 8:214. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00214

See also List of University of Chicago faculty List of Jewish American scientists

References

External links The Kay Lab at UChicago Leslie M. Kay on X

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Leslie M. Kay

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Leslie M. Kay claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Leslie M. Kay before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Leslie M. Kay ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Leslie M. Kay

In research: Leslie M. Kay appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Leslie M. Kay in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Leslie M. Kay is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century American Jews, American LGBTQ scientists, American neuroscientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Leslie M. Kay outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Leslie M. Kay in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Leslie M. Kay means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Leslie M. Kay out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Leslie M. Kay in simple terms?

Leslie M. Kay is an American neuroscientist and a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago.

Why does Leslie M. Kay matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Leslie M. Kay?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Leslie M. Kay.