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SUMMARY:How and Why Does a Fly See? Linking Neural Circuits with Computati
 onal Purpose Using Virtual Reality and Genetics - BIOENGINEERING Sandwich 
 Seminar
DTSTART:20131111T121500
DTSTAMP:20260415T235716Z
UID:c85cae7d64bc2686aa832cfcbfa13c2c713c0609ff253311b501e7b9
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Andrew Straw\, Institute of Molecular Pathology\, Vienna
  (AT)\nBio: Andrew Straw started his lab in 2010 at the Research Institute
  of Molecular Pathology\, Vienna (IMP). He is the recipient of an ERC Star
 ting Grant titled 'FlyVisualCircuits' and his laboratory develops virtual 
 reality technology to enable sophisticated experiments on the important mo
 del system Drosophila melanogaster. He completed his PhD doing intracellul
 ar electrophysiology in the visual system of flies in 2004 at the Universi
 ty of Adelaide\, Australia. As a postdoc at the California Institute of Te
 chnology from 2004-2010\, he developed realtime free-flight tracking techn
 ologies that enabled him to discover a new visual reflex in freely flying 
 flies.\nCircuit neuroscience was revolutionized in the last several years 
 by the use of genetics to express proteins such as channelrhodopsin and GC
 aMP in molecularly defined neuronal classes. Concurrently\, a recent trend
  in cognitive science is to model the mind within a quantitative framework
  in which the purpose of perception\, decision-making and learning is fram
 ed within the context of Bayesian inference. Visually guided behavior of t
 he fruit fly is an ideal experimental system for linking these approaches 
 to establish a both a mechanistic understanding of neuronal circuit functi
 on and computational purpose of behavior. I will discuss recent work in my
  lab examining how flies respond to conflicting visual stimuli. Mechanisti
 cally\, we have identified a class of neurons that modulate behavioral res
 ponses specifically when two simultaneously presented stimuli are in confl
 ict\, but not when either stimulus is presented alone. In our efforts to u
 nderstand the computational purpose of these behaviors\, we developed a si
 mple new model based on cellular responses of a particularly well-studied 
 neuronal class and show that this model predicts several previously unexpl
 ained components of behavior. Additionally\, I will discuss several new te
 chnologies we built to allow us to dissect circuit function under naturali
 stic conditions similar to those in which the relevant behavior evolved\, 
 allowing us make rigorous statements about computational purpose. These in
 clude an advanced seamless multi-projector virtual reality system for free
 ly moving animals.
LOCATION:SV1717A http://map.epfl.ch/?room=sv1717a
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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