The Research Office makes availble several tools to connect researchers to the most appropriate funding opportunities. One such tool is the platform ResearchConnect, a third-party platform that facilitates searches via a powerful search engine and deep database of funding opportunities.
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\r\nWould you like to learn more about how ResearchConnect works, and benefit from an expert training in how to optimize your searches? Join us for an event hosted by the Research Office and featuring Mylene Joubin, accout manager and expert user representing ResarchConnect.
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\r\n>> REGISTER HERE <<
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Students in the Deep Learning course will showcase their group projects focused on fostering safer online spaces. The poster session will highlight their deep learning models designed to identify and address hate speech across a variety of online content.
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\r\nThe group projects tackle online hate in its diverse forms, ranging from text to images, memes, videos, and audio content. With the objective of creating healthier online interactions, the students designed their models to prioritize both accuracy and a nuanced understanding of context in order to distinguish between genuinely harmful hate speech and legitimate critical discourse or satirical expression.
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\r\nThe development of these deep learning models aims to prevent the proliferation of hateful rhetoric, ultimately contributing to a more respectful online environment where diverse voices can coexist and thrive.
Many plasticity rules rely on adjusting the strength of synapses between pairs of cells based on their coincident activity. We uncovered a new mechanism for coincidence detection in the Drosophila head direction network. To maintain an accurate sense of direction, head direction neurons that signal orientation during navigation must learn to anchor to relevant external sensory cues in novel environments. Yet the synaptic mechanism for this form of unsupervised learning is unknown in any organism. In Drosophila, GABAergic visual inputs converge onto head direction neurons, and these inhibitory synapses change strength with experience to learn the relationship between visual landmarks and head direction. However, how coincident pre- and postsynaptic activity is detected across this inhibitory synapse is not understood. We discovered that neurons which release the monoamine octopamine close a feedback loop that conveys postsynaptic head direction activity onto presynaptic terminals of visual inputs. This octopamine pathway is required for anchoring the head direction network to visual cues. Furthermore, pairing structured activation of octopamine neurons with a visual cue is sufficient to drive rapid plasticity, even without postsynaptic head direction cell activity. Previous work has extensively characterized coincidence detection mechanisms at excitatory synapses; our work defines a novel mechanism for coincidence detection at an inhibitory synapse, in which postsynaptic activity is relayed via a neuromodulatory neuron onto presynaptic terminals.
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