November 10, 2014　　15:00 〜 16:30

CiNet bldg. 1F Conference Room

Televised talk : Prof. Scott Waddell

Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, The University of Oxford,

Abstract:

Learning permits animals to convert innate reflexive stimulus-driven behavioral responses into meaningful stimulus-guided actions.

Understanding how such sensory-motor transformations are implemented and altered in the nervous system is a subject of great interest. In Drosophila, innate behavioral responses to odors can be redirected towards approach or avoidance by a learning session that couples odor exposure with rewarding sugar or punitive electric shock, respectively.

Recently, substantial progress has been made in understanding the neural mechanisms of odorant coding and learning in the fly. However, it remains unclear how peripheral odor responses are transformed into behavioral performance and how learning redirects the transformation. I will discuss our most recent experiments that suggest we have located a key site of learning-relevant synaptic plasticity for odor-guided