Neuroscience Seminar Series

We are delighted to announce our next Neuroscience Seminar Series talk. Presentations by experts in their field will take place both here at MPINB and via Zoom.

"Spatial cognition in zebrafish: learning flexible world models in a compact biological brain"

Jennifer Li - MPI for Biological Cybernetics

Place cells are the neural substrate of spatial cognitive maps, which dynamically update as an animal discovers relevant information about its environment. A longstanding question in neuroscience is how place cells can efficiently integrate spatial (e.g. position and heading) and temporal (e.g. salient events) information to support flexible navigation. Progress has been slowed by several fundamental limitations -- place cells combine multimodal inputs across the brain and reorganize over timescales ranging from seconds to months. A core technological challenge in neuroscience remains the inability to access most of the brain, most of the time, across most of an animal’s lifespan. To address this, my lab has developed a tracking microscope that enables brain-wide recording of neural activity at cellular-resolution in freely moving larval and juvenile zebrafish. With this technology, we discovered place cells for the first time in a non-amniote species and created new spatial learning assays to investigate experience-dependent changes in spatial maps. In this talk, I will discuss our recent work on the dynamics of place cell activity in changing environments, the neuromodulatory control of place cell plasticity, and our broader goal of building a holistic and mechanistic account of spatial cognition across the lifespan of an animal.

In-Person

MPINB Lecture Hall, Ludwig-Erhard-Allee 2, 53175 Bonn

Zoom

https://mpinb-mpg-de.zoom.us/j/63767300567
Meeting-ID: 637 6730 0567

To the overview