The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Cori Bargmann, Ph.D., Torsten N. Wiesel Professor, Head of the Lulu and Anthony Wang Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior, The Rockefeller University; investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Speaker bio(s)

How does the brain generate flexible responses to the environment based on context, motivation and experience? The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has a small, genetically hard-wired nervous system, yet its preferences for odors, food sources and other animals vary based on environmental conditions, internal modulatory states and genetic variation. The circuits of the wiring diagram are remodeled in real time by neuromodulators reflecting internal states, which help select appropriate behavioral responses from a larger number of latent circuits, and lead to both rapid and long-lasting changes in behavior. One example is seen in foraging behaviors, where a neuromodulatory circuit generates long-lasting behavioral states through two conserved neuromodulators, serotonin and a neuropeptide. The neurons that produce and respond to each neuromodulator form a distributed circuit orthogonal to the anatomical wiring diagram. The temporal dynamics of this neuromodulatory circuit supplement fast motor circuits to initiate and maintain long-lasting behavioral states.

Dr. Bargmann received her Ph.D. in 1987 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she worked under Robert A. Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. She pursued a postdoctoral fellowship with H. Robert Horvitz, also at MIT, until 1991, when she accepted a faculty position at the University of California, San Francisco. She remained there until 2004, when she joined Rockefeller as the Torsten N. Wiesel Professor. Dr. Bargmann also is codirector of the Shelby White and Leon Levy Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior. She has been an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1995.

Dr. Bargmann is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received the 2013 Breakthrough Award in Life Sciences, the 2012 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, the 2012 Dart/NYU Biotechnology Achievement Award, the 2009 Richard Lounsbery Award from the U.S. and French National Academies of Sciences and the 2004 Dargut and Milena Kemali International Prize for Research in Basic and Clinical Neurosciences.

Open to

Public

Reception

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

Contact

Alena Powell

Phone

(212) 327-7745

Sponsor

Alena Powell
(212) 327-7745
apowell@rockefeller.edu