CASCB talk: Generating Parallel Representations of Position and Identity in the Olfactory System
Time
Monday, 12. December 2022
11:45 - 12:45
Location
ZT 702 and online
Organizer
CASCB
Speaker:
Dr Dana Galili, University of Cambridge, UK
This event is part of an event series „CASCB Seminar Series 2022/23“.
Generating parallel representations of position and identity in the olfactory system
Sex pheromones are key social signals in many animals. in Drosophila, the male pheromone cVA promotes female mating while repelling males. We show that flies use separate neuronal processing streams to extract qualitative (“what”) and positional (“where”) information from this pheromone. Olfactory neurons detect inter-antennal differences in cva concentration, encoding the angular position of a male. We further identify neurons with distinct response properties and sensory integration motifs: a speed-dependent detector for male approach, a male presence detector controlling female mating decisions, and a coincidence detector integrating male taste and smell for female mating. For a single odour, the fly brain generates a range of complex percepts in discrete populations of central neurons, that allow the expression of appropriate behaviours depending on context. such separation of olfactory features resembles the mammalian what and where visual streams.
Dr Galili did her PhD at the Max Planck Institute our Neurobiology in Martinsried, where she studied learning and memory in Drosophila. Since 2016 she has been a post-doc at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, where she studies sexually dimorphic neural circuits and behaviour in drosophila. during her post-doc she was awarded an EMBO long-term fellowship and a Marie-Curie Individual fellowship.
