Lessons from the olfactory system
Description
Animals sense the chemical world to guide their behaviors. Fluctuating mixtures of odorants, often transported in fluid environments, are detected by an array of chemical sensors and parsed by neural circuits to identify odor objects that can inform behavioral decisions. Unlike other sensory systems, the olfactory system lacks an obvious topographic organization, has a shallow hierarchy, and neural connectivity across brain regions is seemingly unstructured. These anomalies offer an opportunity to uncover common principles across different sensory systems. I will use a behavioral task in which mice can learn to recognize individual odorants embedded in unpredictable background mixtures, to raise interesting questions about sensory representations, feedforward vs. feedback architecture and circuit plasticity.
Speaker Bio
I was born in a small industrial town in south India called Neyveli. After getting a B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, I came to the United States with a vague idea of combining engineering and biology. A degree (M.S.E.) in Bioengineering from the University of Washington, Seattle led to my interest in neuroscience. A Ph.D. in Physiology & Biophysics at the University of Washington followed, and postdoctoral work at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, solidified my path in neuroscience research. I came to Harvard University as an Assistant Professor in 1999 and am now a Professor of Molecular & Cellular Biology (and a member of the Center for Brain Science). I continue my daily fight to maintain a healthy balance between pursuing one area of research in depth and getting tempted by exciting new directions.
Additional Info
The MIT Colloquium on the Brain and Cognition is a lecture series held weekly during the academic year and features a wide array of speakers from all areas of neuroscience and cognitive science research. The social receptions that follow these colloquia bring together students, staff, and faculty to discuss the talk, as well as other research activities within Building 46, at MIT, and around the world. This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT. Colloquia are open to the community, and are held in MIT's Building 46, Room 3002 (Singleton Auditorium) at 4:00PM with a reception to follow in the Building 46 Atrium.