Event Details:
Join the speaker for coffee, cookies, and conversation before the talk, starting at 11:45am.
Neural algorithms of olfactory navigation
Abstract
Olfactory systems are continuously barraged with odors, varying in their structure, physicochemical properties, and concentration. Detecting and making sense of such a complex chemical landscape poses a distinct challenge to the fundamental flexibility of the nervous system. We have has been using olfaction as a window into the mechanisms of adaptive behavior, leveraging the concise olfactory circuits of Drosophila to reveal how animals can detect, perceive, and navigate the vast chemical world.
Vanessa Ruta, PhD
Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Associate Professor of Neurophysiology and Behavior, Rockefeller University; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Vanessa Ruta is the Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Professor at the Rockefeller University where her lab aims to elucidate how nervous systems are shaped by either individual experience or evolutionary selection to give rise to flexible variations in behavior. By applying a broad multidisciplinary toolkit to the relatively simple neural circuits of the fly, her lab has begun to gain mechanistic insight into how behaviors can be flexibly modified over different timescales at the level of synaptic, cellular, and circuit motifs. Dr. Ruta received a B.A. in chemistry from Hunter College of CUNY and a Ph.D. from The Rockefeller University, where she worked with Rod MacKinnon. After conducting postdoctoral research in Richard Axel’s lab at Columbia University, she returned to Rockefeller University to start her own group in 2011. Dr. Ruta was named a MacArthur Fellow, a McKnight Scholar, a Pew Biomedical Scholar, and a Simons Foundation Investigator. Dr. Ruta was appointed as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in 2021.
Hosted by Krisa Ye (Gordon Lab)
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About the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Seminar Series
The Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute seminar series brings together the Stanford neuroscience community to discuss cutting-edge, cross-disciplinary brain research, from biochemistry to behavior and beyond.
Topics include new discoveries in fundamental neurobiology; advances in human and translational neuroscience; insights from computational and theoretical neuroscience; and the development of novel research technologies and neuro-engineering breakthroughs.
Unless otherwise noted, seminars are held Thursdays at 12:00 noon PT.