This seminar will begin at 4:00 pm at the Jerome L. Greene Science Center, room L7-119. Light refreshments will be available starting at 3:30 pm.

This month's speakers:

Avner Wallach (Sawtell lab): "Costs and Benefits of Motor Behavior in Active Sensing"

Theories of active sensing posit that motor behavior plays a crucial role in perception. However, motor behavior introduces sensory ambiguity and necessitates an internal model that predicts the sensory consequences of behavior. Past studies in immobilized weakly electric fish have identified neural mechanisms for predicting and canceling the effects of self-generated motion on the electrosensory input, but it is unknown whether such mechanisms hold during natural exploration and allow motor behavior to improve perception. To test this, we developed methods for long-term neural recordings of local field potentials and single-units in the electrosensory lobe (ELL) of freely behaving fish during exploratory behavior. We demonstrate that while decoding the location of objects based on electrosensory input alone is virtually impossible due to motor-related distortions, implementing an internal model enables motor behavior to dramatically enhance decoding acuity.

Felix Fiederling (Mason/Dodd lab): "Identification and Mapping of Developing Somatosensory Circuits"

Somatosensation critically relies on sensory neurons in the dorsal spinal cord (dorsal interneurons; dINs), which receive external information from primary sensory neurons in the periphery and signal to central targets in the brain. Although many early properties of dINs have been identified, it remains unclear which subsets serve each somatosensory function in mature stages and how they integrate into functional circuits. Thus, in order to understand how selective sensory modalities are established during development, it is essential to identify the cellular connectivity of specific dIN subclasses within distinct functional circuits. The objective of my research is to bring genetic and anatomical focus to the development of the circuits of the dI1 population of sensory neurons. Visualizing synaptic connections between dI1 cells and dorsal root ganglion neurons, identifying central targets and the axonal routes of these neurons, and eventually manipulating their activities, will provide novel insights into the functional organization of somatosensory circuits in the developing spinal cord.   

This seminar is part of the Zuckerman Institute Postdoctoral Seminar series. For questions about this or future seminars, please contact series organizers Chris Rodgers, PhD, or Amy Norovich, PhD.