MIT Colloquium on Brain & Cognition with Dr. Bob Datta
Description
The Datta lab studies how information from the outside world is detected, encoded in the brain, and transformed into meaningful behavioral outputs. We address this fundamental problem by characterizing the olfactory system, the sensory system used by most animals to interact with their environment. Here we discuss recent results relevant to understanding sensorimotor coupling in the olfactory system. We first describe a novel molecular mechanism that underlies odor perception; this mechanism defines a new mode of sensory encoding in mammals, and is likely relevant to odor perception across deuterostomal lineages, including humans. We also describe new approaches we have recently developed to understand how genes and circuits important to sensorimotor coupling in the olfactory system might impact behavior; these methods may afford insight into mechanisms that allow animals to flexibly navigate the outside world, and serve as a quantitative prism through which the function of genes and neural circuits can be understood.
Speaker Bio
Sandeep Robert Datta obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics from Yale University in 1993, and obtained an M.D./Ph.D degree from Harvard University in 2004. After working as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University with the Nobel laureate Richard Axel, he joined the Harvard Medical School Department of Neurobiology in 2009. His lab focuses on understanding how sensory cues — particularly odors — are detected by the nervous system, and how the brain transforms information about the presence of salient sensory cues into patterns of motivated action. This work involves studying genes involved in detecting odors, revealing the patterns of neural activity deep in the brain that encode sensory maps of the outside world, and probing the fundamental statistical structure of behavior itself. Dr. Datta has published numerous articles on his research in journals including Cell, Science and Nature, is a reviewer and an editor at multiple scientific journals, and is a Principal Investigator in the Italian Institute of Technology/Harvard Medical School joint program in the neurosciences. Dr. Datta has received the prestigious NIH New Innovator Award, the Burroughs Welcome Career Award in the Medical Sciences, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Searle Scholars Award, the Vallee Young Investigator Award, the McKnight Endowment Fund Scholar Award and has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Science/Kavli Scholars program.