T&C Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience Seminar: Dr. James Jeanne
Jamie received a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 2005 and a Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience from UC San Diego in 2012. As a graduate student with Dr. Timothy Gentner and Dr. Tatyana Sharpee, he investigated plasticity in neural population codes in the auditory cortex of the European Starling, a common species of songbird with an exceptional capacity for learning. As a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Rachel Wilson at Harvard Medical School, he studied the functional roles of convergent and divergent neural circuit motifs in the olfactory system of the fruit fly. Subsequently, using 2-photon optogenetic circuit mapping, he has begun to reveal the functional organization of higher-order olfactory circuits. He joined the Department of Neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine in the Fall of 2017. The Jeanne Lab is broadly interested in understanding how neural circuits implement the computations that support behavior. We study the fruit fly because of its tractability: the brain contains only 100,000 neurons, neural circuits are stereotyped from fly to fly (down to the level of individual neurons), and large libraries of genetic driver lines enable precise targeting of individual neurons for physiology experiments. Current research aims to understand the circuit and computational mechanisms of sensory processing, working memory, and decision making.
Please join us for a T&C Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience Seminar on Monday, October 28 at 4:00PM in Chen 100.
Speaker: Dr. James Jeanne, Yale School of Medicine
Talk Title: Mechanisms of parallel processing in the brain
Abstract: Parallel processing is a major substrate of computational power in the brain. Accordingly, connectomes of complete circuits uncover many anatomical pathways for information flow. How do different pathways implement different processing? While differences in connectivity are clearly important, differences in synaptic inhibition, short-term synaptic plasticity, and intrinsic cellular biophysics are all likely to contribute as well. However, linking these mechanisms to the circuit-level segregation of computation has been challenging. To overcome these challenges, my laboratory studies parallel processing in Drosophila olfaction, a model system where single second-order projection neurons diverge to target many third-order neurons. We use a combination of in vivo patch-clamp electrophysiology, 2-photon optogenetics, and calcium imaging from neurons with known connectivity to investigate the biophysical properties that enable and constrain signal propagation through divergent networks. I will share recent results from my lab demonstrating how olfactory coding in projection neurons is diversified by their downstream targets in the lateral horn and mushroom body, and how this depends on a striking amount of diversity in synaptic, cellular, and circuit properties. Our work is revealing how parallel processing is organized and implemented in the brain and establishes Drosophila olfaction as an invaluable experimental platform for testing its functional roles.
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