Talk title: The neural basis of cuttlefish camouflage and social behavior

Speaker: Tessa G. Montague, ph.D.; HHMI Hanna Gray Fellow, Richard Axel Lab at Columbia University 

Abstract: Cuttlefish are coleoid cephalopods that dynamically change the color, pattern and texture of their skin to camouflage with their surroundings. Camouflage is achieved by expanding and contracting pigment-filled saccules in the skin called chromatophores, through the action of motor neurons that project from the brain. Thus, the patterning of the skin is a physical manifestation of neural activity in the brain. In addition to camouflage, cuttlefish use their dynamic skin to communicate with conspecifics using a series of innate skin patterns that reveal the animal’s internal state. We are using the cuttlefish skin behaviors to understand how the physical properties of the visual world are represented by patterns of neural activity in the brain, and how this representation is transformed into an approximation of the physical world on the skin. We have performed a series of experiments to develop the dwarf cuttlefish, Ascarosepion bandense, as a model to investigate the neural basis of camouflage and social communication. We have described the stages of embryonic development, sequenced the genome and transcriptome, completed a 3D brain atlas, developed camouflage and social behavioral paradigms, and examined dwarf cuttlefish behavior in the wild. Furthermore, we are generating transgenic cuttlefish that express genetically-encoded calcium indicators and light-activated channels, permitting the live imaging and manipulation of neural activity. These technologies should permit us to simultaneously record neural activity and measure behavior to uncover how visual information is deconstructed in the brain, and then reconstructed into an image of the physical world on the skin.