Systems Neuroscience

Project Summary Oxytocin is a peptide hormone synthesized and released from the hypothalamus for reproduction, maternal care, and social behavior, as well as various ‘non-social’ aspects of internal state and physiological processes. Although sometimes referred to as a ‘trust’ hormone, a growing body of evidence across species and brain areas indicates that oxytocin can increase social salience, i.e., amplifying or enabling selective attention towards certain social stimuli, such as the sound of a crying infant or the presence of a threatening or high-status individual.

Abstract Humans can rapidly regulate actions according to updated demands of the environment. A key component of action regulation is action inhibition, the failure of which contributes to various neuropsychiatric diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD), obsessive compulsive disorder and Tourette syndrome.

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Individuals make choices and prioritize actions using complex processes that assign value to rewards and associated stimuli based on prior experience. In our modern environment, we are surrounded by an abundance of stimuli that fight for our attention and often hinder goal-directed behavior. Stimuli, or cues in our environment, attain control over behavior via Pavlovian learning, such that previously neutral stimuli that predict reward acquire motivational properties and are thereby transformed into attractive and desirable incentive stimuli.

Abstract Decades of research have revealed the principles of information processing that give rise to auditory spatial tuning and experience-dependent adaptive plasticity in the owl auditory system. This is a strong foundation on which to build a multiscale understanding of circuit function from synapse to behavior.

Many animals rely on their ability to navigate to the source of airborne odor plumes for survival. Studies dating back a century have shown that insects combine mechanosensory and olfactory cues to navigate, surging upwind when detecting odor but go crosswind or downwind when losing the signal. They also use bilateral information from their two antennae to turn toward higher odor concentrations. We recently discovered that in addition to wind direction and odor gradient, fruit flies detect the direction of motion of odors, independent of the wind.

Project Summary Mother-infant bonding is a key relationship that lays a foundation for wellness throughout life. Social recognition is an important component of this relationship, as infants imprint on the smell of their mothers and use olfaction to distinguish their mother from others.

PROJECT SUMMARY: Animals constantly detect different environmental stimuli and change their behavior or physiology based on their internal state. How animals integrate the external multiple sensory information with the internal state is largely unclear. The specific goal of this proposal is to explore the neural circuits and mechanisms of internal state- dependent modulation of multiple sensory integrations. We will draw on a powerful, versatile, and relatively simple genetic model, Drosophila, to address the neural mechanisms of taste-temperature integration.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: Vision and touch share a critical function—perception of 3D object shape. We use vision and touch both alternatively and simultaneously to recognize, understand, and interact physically with real world objects, based on detailed apprehension of their 3D shapes and mechanical functionality.

Abstract Movements are measurable outputs of the nervous system and simple movements can be combined to compose complicated behaviors. We use limb tracking and connectome analyses to map the neural circuits controlling the elemental leg movements in Drosophila grooming. The organization of the pre-motor networks for this innate, sequential behavior will show a successful solution for a complex motor control problem and reveal generalizable connectivity motifs whose computational functions can be experimentally tested.

Project Summary To navigate and guide locomotion in a complex 3D environment, humans and animals must make countless judgments of their direction of self-motion, or heading. Each of these is a multisensory perceptual decision, able to achieve greater accuracy and precision by combining signals from the visual, vestibular, and kinesthetic senses. At the same time, the brain must decide when to commit to a course of action (e.g., to quickly change direction to avoid an obstacle), and make predictions of the likelihood of success in that action.