This seminar will begin at 4:00 pm at the Jerome L. Greene Science Center on Columbia University’s Manhattanville campus (L7-119). Light refreshments will be available starting at 3:30 pm.

This month's speakers:

Akram Bakkour, PhD (Shohamy Lab) "A pervasive role for the hippocampus in deliberation during value-based decision making"

Deciding between two equally appealing options can take considerable time, but it is not clear what the time is used for. We hypothesized that the time it takes to make value-based decisions is related to the use of memory during deliberation because the evidence used to resolve preferences derives in part from hippocampal memory mechanisms. We found converging evidence from fMRI and amnesic patients pointing to a role for the hippocampus in value-based decisions.

Barbara Noro, PhD (Axel Lab) "Functional architecture of an innate olfactory pathway"

Instincts are critical for an animal’s survival. They ensure that an individual appropriately responds to vital cues without the need for prior experience. To understand how sensory stimuli can be reliably translated into motor action, we leveraged the peripheral simplicity of the fly olfactory system. In Drosophila, the activation of a single population of olfactory sensory neurons is sufficient to evoke innate avoidance of carbon dioxide (CO2). We have characterized many of the neurons involved in CO2 avoidance, from the sense organ to higher brain centers. We find that aversive behaviors do not rely on a minimal and concise circuit, but rather depend upon a highly distributed and recurrent neuronal architecture to robustly respond to a seemingly simple aversive stimulus.

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