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SUMMARY:From motion to interaction: integration of elementary visual cues 
 in zebrafish social behavior
DTSTART:20260608T103000
DTEND:20260608T113000
DTSTAMP:20260527T194632Z
UID:555b789c5005d304db4ffaf3f919c073910f7b7a4095cebedbc3c1d3
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Johannes Larsch <johannes.larsch@unil.ch> \nMany specie
 s live in groups and coordinate behavior with conspecifics\, but the senso
 ry computations that allow individuals to detect\, evaluate\, and respond 
 to others remain difficult to study. A major challenge is that social inte
 ractions are reciprocal: animals continuously change each other’s sensor
 y experience\, making it hard to separate stimulus\, perception\, internal
  state\, and behavioral response.\n\nIn my lab\, we use juvenile zebrafish
  shoaling as an experimentally accessible model for vertebrate social beha
 vior. Using virtual reality\, we previously identified self-like biologica
 l motion as a visual trigger of shoaling and traced this signal into a tec
 to-thalamic pathway that contributes to social attraction. We now build on
  this framework to ask how elementary visual cues are combined into richer
  social representations.\n\nI will discuss two examples. In one project\, 
 behavioral experiments and neural recordings suggest that zebrafish evalua
 te group size through an integrated visual variable that combines object n
 umber and motion\, so that faster small groups can become behaviorally equ
 ivalent to slower larger groups. In another\, we study social buffering: t
 he reduction of fear-related behavior by conspecific cues. Here\, social i
 nformation can either transmit immediate alarm or provide persistent safet
 y\, depending on context. Whole-brain activity mapping reveals neural corr
 elates of fear state and its suppression by social cues.\n\nTogether\, the
 se projects show how controlled visual stimuli\, quantitative behavior\, w
 hole-brain activity mapping\, and cellular-resolution imaging can reveal h
 ow animals transform simple sensory features into social decisions. More b
 roadly\, this work aims to understand how nervous systems extract meaning 
 from the motion and presence of others — from detecting social cues to f
 inding safety in numbers.
LOCATION:GA 3 21 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==GA%203%2021
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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