Event Details:
Brain-scale neural circuits for visual motion processing in zebrafish Eva Naumann, PhD Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University
School of Engineering and Stanford Neurosciences Institute Faculty Candidate
Abstract: The larval zebrafish presents an exciting opportunity to investigate the neural basis of vertebrate behavior at the brain scale. However, it has been particularly difficult to distill neural circuits from whole‐brain measurements of neural activity. By combining detailed psychophysics, anatomy, cellular resolution whole‐brain imaging, and circuit perturbations, we establish critical links between brain‐ and circuit‐level descriptions of the zebrafish optomotor response. Specifically, we find diverse neural response types distributed across multiple brain regions and show that to transform visual motion into action, these regions sequentially integrate eye‐ and direction‐specific sensory streams, refine representations via interhemispheric inhibition, and demix locomotor instructions into distinct motor modules. Ultimately, we develop a quantitative whole‐brain model that explains the behavior and reduces the space of possible synaptic connections into a few critical dimensions of functional connectivity among identified neural response types. More generally, our methodology illustrates a flexible paradigm for studying diverse brain‐scale computations related to individuality, learning, and motivational states.
Bio: Dr. Eva Naumann studied biology at the University of Konstanz in Germany with a focus on molecular and neurodevelopmental biology. As a doctoral candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology, she worked to characterize genetically encoded calcium sensors and subsequently transitioned to the zebrafish as a graduate student in Florian Engert’s laboratory at Harvard University. There, she focused on advancing experimental tools and methodologies for linking whole‐brain neural circuits to behavior. This included the design and engineering of a novel method to measure neural activity in freely behaving zebrafish. As Marie Curie Fellow in Jason Rihel’s laboratory at University College London and again in the Engert lab, she used detailed behavioral analysis and brain‐wide two‐photon calcium imaging of neural activity to develop whole‐brain functional circuit models of a visually guided orienting behavior, the optomotor response. Dr. Naumann’s future research interests include the internal and external factors that shape neural circuit function and behavior, with an emphasis on the neural mechanisms underlying individuality.