Katalin Tóth
Administrative Accomplishments
I served as the President of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience (CAN), and previously as the chair of its Advocacy Committee. This opportunity allowed me to build a successful advocacy strategy for CAN, foster collaborations across the country, and develop our partnership with SFN. Currently, I am a member of the Finance Committee of SFN.
I was the Director of the Graduate Programme in Neurosceince at Laval University between 2012 and 2020. At the same period, I acted as the coordinator and member of the Board of Education for the Erasmus Mundus International Master’s Programme in Neuroscience (Neurasmus) where our university partnered with four European universities. I have been actively involved in the development of these training programmes, my enthusiasm for this work stemmed from the opportunity to promote neuroscience around the world and the international spirit it inspired at our home institutions.
Currently, I am the Chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Ottawa.
Degree, Institute, Year Earned
| Degree | Institute | Year Earned |
| Ph.D. (Neurobiology) | Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary | 1995 |
| M.Sc. (Neurobiology) | Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary | 1992 |
| B.Sc. (Biology) | Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary | 1991 |
Research Areas
- Synaptic transmission, short-term plasticity, memory formation, neurotransmitter release, information processing
Current Position(s) at Your Current Institution
- Professor and Chair
Memberships
| Organization | Position Held | Year(s) |
| Society for Neuroscience | Member | 1997-present |
| Finance Committee – Member | 2020-present | |
| The Canadian Association for Neuroscience (CAN) | Member | 2007-present |
| Past President | 2020-2021 | |
| President | 2019-2020 | |
| Vice President | 2018-2019 | |
| Chair of the Advocacy Committee | 2016-2018 | |
| Secretary | 2013-2016 |
Service Positions
Editorial Boards:
| Publication | Position Held | Year(s) |
| JNeurosci | Associate Editor | 2021-present |
| eNeuro | Reviewing Editor | 2018-2021 |
| The Journal of Physiology | Senior Editor | 2020-present |
| Reviewing Editor | 2013-2020 | |
| eLife | Reviewing Editor | 2020-present |
Science Biography
Katalin Tóth completed her undergraduate and graduate work at Eötvös Loránd University, in Budapest, Hungary under the supervision of Dr Tamás Freund. She was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr Richard Miles at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and Dr Chris McBain at the NIH in Bethesda. She established her laboratory at Laval University in Quebec City, Canada in 2000 and in 2020 moved to the University of Ottawa. She is the Chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, past President of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience, and serves as member of the Finance Committee of the Society for Neuroscience.
Dr Tóth’s research program aims to identify synaptic processes that play a key role in the formation, storage and retrieval of memories. Work in her laboratory is focused on identifying the fine scale cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in information processing in the hippocampus. Presynaptic terminals shape the pattern of neurotransmitter release in response to different incoming inputs based on their exact subcellular composition, calcium and vesicle dynamics. Work from her laboratory shed light on how several presynaptic mechanisms influence short-term plasticity, including diverse vesicle recycling mechanisms, various forms of neurotransmitter release, and specific calcium channels. Her group unveiled a fundamentally new aspect of the physiological role of asynchronous release in synaptic information transfer and showed the role of different vesicles recycling pathways to this type of neurotransmitter release. They found that certain calcium channels control glutamate release at a limited number of release sites through highly localized Ca2+ elevations and support short-term facilitation by enhancing multivesicular release, while others promote the recruitment of additional release sites through spatially homogeneous Ca2+ elevations. The combination of synchronization of multivesicular release and the recruitment of additional release sites supported by the spatial profile of calcium elevations in terminals expands the dynamic range over which hippocampal mossy fibers can reliably transmit information. Her team investigated how the presynaptic machinery translates the number of presynaptic action potentials to postsynaptic firing using presynaptic calcium measurements and experimentally constrained modelling of neurotransmitter release. They identified the key parameters that determine how bursts encode information at giant hippocampal mossy fiber terminals.
Through several collaborative projects with creative colleagues, Dr Tóth’s work expanded into diverse and exciting new directions. She contributed to the development of novel two-photon imaging modalities using genetically encoded voltage sensors (Drs. Lin, St-Pierre, Dieudonné). With Dr. Naud she worked on a novel theoretical framework for the proper understanding of the role of different types of action potential firing modes in network function. She used her expertise in ultrastructural morphological approaches to investigate synaptic structure and function of human brain tissue obtained during brain surgery (Drs. McBain and Pelkey).
The full CV for this candidate can be found within the ballot.
