We study how animals sense the world around and within them. In particular, we focus on how insects sense temperature and humidity, and how the detection of these stimuli drives their behavior and alters their physiology. The seminar will examine the current understanding of how thermo- and hygro-sensory input is detected at the molecular and cell biological levels and how neural circuits process this sensory input.

Title: Dynamic Algorithmic Networks of Visual Categorization

Abstract:* Thermosensation is a critical sensory modality for all organisms. C. elegans exhibits the remarkable ability to detect temperature changes of as little as 0.01°C

Abstract: Sensory prediction is thought to be vital to organisms, but few studies have tested how well organisms and parts of organisms efficiently predict their sensory input in an information-theoretic sense. In this talk, we report results on how well cultured neurons ("brain in a dish") and humans efficiently predict artificial stimuli. We find that both are efficient predictors of their artificial input.

DNA methylation is a critical regulatory mechanism underlying human brain development, learning, memory, and disease. In particular, the importance of cell-type specific epigenetic variation of non-coding regions in neuropsychiatric disorders, which are considered human-specific, is increasingly appreciated. We investigated evolutionary

*Abstract:* Many of our behaviors are intrinsically motivated by a need to maintain homeostasis, including that of body temperature, energy, and fluid levels. Despite their importance, numerous seemingly simple questions remain unresolved in this field. My presentation will focus on our ongoing efforts to address two of these issues in mouse models.

My goal is to discover the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which protein aggregates contribute to neurodegeneration and to harness these mechanisms to devise novel therapeutic strategies. We use the bakers yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as a simple, yet powerful, model system to study the cell biology underpinning protein-misfolding diseases, which include Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

What
Professor Jacobs will consider the intersection between gender equity in STEM and the status of women’s health—not as concurrent phenomena, but connected ones. She will examine critical ways in which progress in women’s health has stalled from the lack of female representation in biomedicine, including neuroscience.
Who

It is estimated that ~20% of all the visual information falling on the human retina//consists of upright faces. Although the behavioral and neural signatures of face processing have been well studied, not much is known about how long-term visual experience shapes them. The incoming visual experience of faces is thought to have a changeable component (such as expression and gaze direction) and an invariant component (such as the configuration of features).