Speaker: Dr. Albert Cardona
Group Leader - Experimental and comparative connectomics, Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Cambridge (UK)
Presentation
Host: Dr. Jordi Casanova, Group Leader - Development and Morphogenesis in Drosophila - IRB Barcelona
Node: Cell Pathophysiology / Invertebrate Models of Disease
Date: Wednesday 15 November 2023, 12.00h
Place: Auditorium Room
IMPORTANT: For attendees outside the PCB community you must register at least 24h before the seminar.
Abstract
To understand how the nervous system works, we map its synaptic wiring diagram, or connectome; optogenetically drive activity in select neurons to define a neuron-behaviour map; observe the activity of all neurons in a circuit; and study how neuromodulation restructures and repurposes circuits by changing neural circuit dynamics. All of the above is techonologically feasibly in small, genetically tractable organisms such as the larval Drosophila melanogaster. Then, on the basis of the connectome, we formulate computational models of neural circuit function that can capture the observed activity dynamics that underlie behavior, and which serves as a playground for formulating experimentally testable hypotheses of neural circuit function.