Neural Computational Directing Orientation Behavior During Larval Chemotaxis
ONLINE CBE SEMINAR
All Winter 2021 CBE Seminars will be hosted online via Zoom. RSVP to receive zoom link by emailing info@bioengineering.ucsb.edu.
Zoom will open after the host has joined at the start of each seminar. You can ask questions through the chat forum and by raising your "hand" and the speaker will call on you.
Speaker
Matthieu Louis, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
University of California, Santa Barbara
Abstract
Behavioral strategies employed for chemotaxis have been studied across phyla, but
the neural computations underlying odor-guided behaviors remain poorly understood. By
combining quantitative behavioral characterization, neural-circuit analysis and computational
modeling, we explore how dynamical olfactory signals experienced during motion are processed
by the olfactory system of the Drosophila larva. We exploit virtual-olfactory environments
created based on optogenetics to study how sensory information is converted into elementary
orientation decisions directed by neural circuits. Our work aims to quantitatively describe the
loop that underlies the acquisition of sensory information through active movements of the body.
BIO
Dr. Louis received his BA/MA in Theoretical Physics from the Free University of Brussels (Belgium). For his PhD research, he was a pre-doctoral fellow of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). He graduated in Systems Biology from the University of Cambridge. His doctoral thesis focused on modeling the function of a gene regulatory network during Drosophila development. During the completion of his thesis, Dr. Louis became increasingly interested in the function of neural networks. He joined the laboratory of Leslie Vosshall at the Rockefeller University where he studied the mechanisms underlying the detection of olfactory signals in the Drosophila larva. At end of his post-doctoral training, Dr. Louis became a junior Group Leader at the EMBL-CRG Systems Biology Unit of the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona (Spain). As an independent investigator, he worked on delineating how orientation decisions emerge from neural computations carried out by the larval brain. Since 2016, he has joined the MCDB department at the University of California Santa Barbara.
