The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Detlev Arendt, Ph.D., honorary professor, University of Heidelberg, Germany; group leader and senior scientist, European Molecular Biology Laboratory

Speaker bio(s)

The aim of Dr. Arendt's lab is to understand the evolution of brains at the level of neuron types and neural circuits. How did the first neurons assemble into circuits? How did additional circuits emerge and connect to pre-existing ones? Can scientists trace, step by step, the enormous rise in complexity that accompanied the evolution of the vertebrate brain? Dr. Arendt's division of labor model proposes that the step-wise segregation of sensory, integrative and motor functions has driven the diversification of neuron types and the evolution of neural circuits. In this talk he will focus on the evolution of the ancient core of the vertebrate brain, the apical neurosecretory center. Responding to ambient light, this center has controlled the release of melatonin, the so-called “hormone of darkness.” By fusion with the most anterior part of the nerve cord, the neurosecretory center has become the superordinate motor control center of the vertebrate brain. Vertebrate eye and pineal have arisen by duplication and diversification from this ancient core.  

 

Dr. Arendt obtained his Ph.D. in zoology in 1998 from the University of Freiburg, Germany, where he compared nervous system development of bilaterian animals. In 1999, he joined the lab of Joachim Wittbrodt at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, where he worked on eye development. After three years of postdoctoral training, he set up his laboratory at the EMBL as a group leader in the Developmental Biology Unit. The Arendt laboratory has established the marine annelid Platynereis dumerilii, a slow-evolving species, as a new marine molecular model for evolutionary and neurobiological research. It has also recently pioneered the comparison of cell types as a novel approach in the field of evolutionary developmental biology. In 2007, Dr. Arendt became senior scientist at the EMBL and was awarded an honorary professorship at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

 

Open to

Public

Reception

Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge

Contact

Gloria Phipps

Phone

(212) 327-8967

Sponsor

Gloria Phipps
(212) 327-8967
phippsg@rockefeller.edu