Special BMI Seminar // Silvia Arber & Kathy Nagel
Event details
| Date | 21.03.2025 |
| Hour | 10:30 › 12:00 |
| Speaker | Silvia Arber, Biozentrum and Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland & Kathy Nagel: Associate Professor, Department of Neuroscience and Physiology NYU School of Medicine, USA |
| Location | Online |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Silvia Arber: “Generating movements with brainstem circuits”
Movement is the behavioral output of the nervous system. This talk will focus on recent work elucidating the organization and function of neuronal circuits central to the regulation of distinct
forms of body movements, including locomotion and skilled forelimb movements. It will show that dedicated circuit modules in different regions of the brainstem and their interactions within
the motor system play key roles in the generation of diverse actions.
Kathy Nagel: "Neural circuits for working memory during olfactory navigation in Drosophila"
To navigate towards the location of an unknown food source, animals must accumulate evidence about the location of a goal and store this information in working memory. Here we describe a population of local neurons in the fly navigation center that exhibits both evidence integration and working memory dynamics. Using a closed-loop virtual plume navigation paradigm, we show that a bump of activity in this population ramps up in response to successive odor encounters, and can outlast the odor stimulus for several seconds. While activity persists, we find that flies maintain the goal direction they adopted during the odor. Silencing these neurons reduces the persistence of goal maintenance after odor loss. Examining the fly connectome, we find that this population— known as h∆K— are embedded in a circuit with recurrent local excitation and broad inhibition, reminiscent of classical computational models of working memory. Through a combination of in vivo imaging, synpatic physiology, and computational modeling, we show how circuit architecture and synaptic biophysics interact in this circuit to produce stable, tuneable, and rapidly-gated working memory activity. Our work reveals the dynamics of neural circuits that compute goals in a stochastic natural environment, and illustrates how the tools of Drosophila can be used to illuminate cellular and circuit mechanisms supporting cognitive computations.
Movement is the behavioral output of the nervous system. This talk will focus on recent work elucidating the organization and function of neuronal circuits central to the regulation of distinct
forms of body movements, including locomotion and skilled forelimb movements. It will show that dedicated circuit modules in different regions of the brainstem and their interactions within
the motor system play key roles in the generation of diverse actions.
Kathy Nagel: "Neural circuits for working memory during olfactory navigation in Drosophila"
To navigate towards the location of an unknown food source, animals must accumulate evidence about the location of a goal and store this information in working memory. Here we describe a population of local neurons in the fly navigation center that exhibits both evidence integration and working memory dynamics. Using a closed-loop virtual plume navigation paradigm, we show that a bump of activity in this population ramps up in response to successive odor encounters, and can outlast the odor stimulus for several seconds. While activity persists, we find that flies maintain the goal direction they adopted during the odor. Silencing these neurons reduces the persistence of goal maintenance after odor loss. Examining the fly connectome, we find that this population— known as h∆K— are embedded in a circuit with recurrent local excitation and broad inhibition, reminiscent of classical computational models of working memory. Through a combination of in vivo imaging, synpatic physiology, and computational modeling, we show how circuit architecture and synaptic biophysics interact in this circuit to produce stable, tuneable, and rapidly-gated working memory activity. Our work reveals the dynamics of neural circuits that compute goals in a stochastic natural environment, and illustrates how the tools of Drosophila can be used to illuminate cellular and circuit mechanisms supporting cognitive computations.
Practical information
- Informed public
- Free
Organizer
- UPRAMDYA & BMI Host: Pavan Ramdya
Contact
- Kate Maulaz <kathryn.aitkenmaulaz@epfl.ch>