In this keynote session, Eve Marder discusses her career studying the stomatogasric ganglion in crustaceans to learn how neuronal networks produce a behaviorally appropriate output. Then, she and Felix Schweizer discuss the past and future field of neuroethology and the broader impacts of Marder’s work.

Speakers

Eve Marder, PhD

Eve Marder is the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Neuroscience at Brandeis University. She received her PhD in 1974 from the University of California, San Diego, and did postdoctoral studies at the University of Oregon and the École Normale Supérieure, in Paris. Marder is a past president of SfN, a counselor of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has received numerous prizes and awards, including SfN’s Ralph W. Gerard Prize and Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award, the Gruber Prize, the Kavli Prize, and the NAS Award in the Neurosciences. She has received honorary doctorates from Bowdoin College and Tel Aviv University. Marder studies the dynamics of small neuronal networks. Her work was instrumental in demonstrating neuronal circuits are not “hard-wired” but are reconfigured by neuromodulatory neurons and substances to produce a variety of outputs. Her lab combines experimental work with insights from modeling and theoretical studies. It pioneered studies of homeostatic regulation of intrinsic membrane properties and stimulated work on the mechanisms by which brains remain stable while allowing for change during development and learning. Marder’s current work focuses on the robustness of circuits to perturbation.

Felix E. Schweizer, PhD

Felix E. Schweizer is a professor in the department of neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. Born in Basel, Switzerland, he received his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Basel and conducted his graduate research in the laboratory of Max M. Burger under the direction of Theo Schafer. He was a postdoctoral fellow first in the department of molecular and cellular physiology at Stanford University in the laboratory of Richard W. Tsien and then in the department of neurobiology at Duke University in the laboratory of George J. Augustine. His research focuses on the cellular underpinnings of network function with a focus on synaptic transmission.

In this talk, Christophe Dupré discusses how the transparent Hydra vulgaris can be used to study neuronal control of behavior.

Speaker

Christophe Dupré, PhD

Christophe Dupré is a postdoctoral fellow in the molecular and cellular biology department at Harvard University, in the laboratories of Florian Engert and Jeff Lichtman. His research focuses on the nervous system of Hydra vulgaris, particularly on how it is able to adapt to different sizes. He received his BS and MSc from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and his PhD from Columbia University under the supervision of Rafael Yuste.

In this talk, Eric Fortune explores how weakly electric fish can be used as a model system to study the neural basis of behavior.

Speaker

Eric Fortune, PhD

Eric Fortune is an associate professor in the New Jersey Institute of Technology Federated Department of Biological Sciences. He received his PhD in organismal biology and anatomy from the University of Chicago and continued his research as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology at the University of Utah. Fortune's first faculty position was at the Johns Hopkins University in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. His research examines the mechanisms by which sensory feedback is used in the brains of animals for the control of behavior.

In this video, Lan Deng discusses how C. elegans can be used to study locomotion and behavior.

Speaker

Lan Deng

Lan Deng is a PhD candidate in the neuroscience track of the biological sciences program at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She is also a laboratory course instructor. Her research focuses on the study of the ventral nerve cord in C. elegans to understand how neurons coordinate to allow the animal to move.

In this talk, Makoto Araki discusses how zebra finches can be used to study the neural basis of learning and communication.

Speaker

Makoto Araki, PhD

Makoto Araki is a staff scientist at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST). His research focuses on auditory neuronal circuit encoding of species-specific courtship songs in the zebra finch songbird. He earned his PhD in biological sciences from the Hokkaido University and completed postdoctoral training at OIST.

In this video, Ulises Ricoy and Andres Romero discuss how the earthworm can be used as a low-cost animal model to study escape behaviors at an undergraduate serving institution.

Speaker

Ulises Ricoy, PhD

Ulises Ricoy is dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and associate professor of biology at Northern New Mexico College (NNMC), a rural Hispanic/Native American-Serving Institution. He has championed faculty and undergraduate team experiences initiatives via collaborations with the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Massachusetts, Cornell University, and the Argonne and Los Alamos national laboratories. His research focuses on low-cost approaches to examine behavior and neurophysiology in invertebrate organisms. He earned his BS and PhD in behavioral neuroscience from the University of Texas at San Antonio under the direction of Dr. Joe L. Martinez Jr. and completed postdoctoral training in synaptic biophysics at Oregon Health Sciences University. With Andres Romero he has been characterizing vibration frequency sensitivity and neural activity in escaping earthworms.

In this video, Nancy Day and Melissa Coleman discuss how the plain-tailed wren can be used to study the neural coding of behavior that must be coordinated between two individuals.

Speaker

Nancy Day, PhD

Nancy Day is a postdoctoral researcher in the integrative biology and physiology department at the University of California, Los Angeles. She investigates FoxP2, a gene known to be critical for the proper development of human speech and language, in zebra finch songbirds. As a graduate student in neuroscience at the University of Minnesota, she used in vivo electrophysiological recordings to study circuit maturation in HVC of songbirds, leading to her involvement in the duetting wren collaboration. She earned her BA in biology and psychology at Whitman College, where she will be an assistant professor of psychology starting in fall 2019.

In this talk, Hilary Katz and Eduardo Guadarrama discuss how the lamprey is used to study spinal cord regeneration and the neural basis of locomotion.

Speakers

Eduardo Guadarrama

Eduardo Guadarrama is a research assistant in the lab of Jennifer R. Morgan at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. His research focuses on spinal cord regeneration in the sea lamprey. He received his BA in neuroscience from Amherst College.

Hillary Katz, PhD

Hilary Katz is a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Jennifer Morgan at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. She earned her BA from Mount Holyoke College and her MS and PhD in integrative biology from the University of Chicago. Her current research focuses on spinal cord regeneration in the sea lamprey. She uses behavioral and molecular techniques to better understand how lampreys regenerate their spinal cord.

In this talk, Sam Reiter discusses how the cuttlefish’s camouflage response serves as a model of an innate complex behavior and convergent evolution.

Speaker

Sam Reiter, PhD

Sam Reiter is a postdoctoral researcher in the department of neural systems and coding at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research. He earned his undergraduate degree in neuroscience from Brown University and his PhD in neuroscience from the NIH-Brown Graduate Partnership Program. His current research is on the relationship between the brain and behavior, with a recent focus on quantitative measurements of cuttlefish skin patterning.

In this video, Anna Schneider discusses how the stomatogastric nervous system (STNS) of crustaceans can be used to study how neuromodulators affect the circuit dynamics of the STNS.

Speaker

Anna Schneider, PhD

Anna C. Schneider is a postdoctoral fellow in the Nadim and Bucher labs at New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University. Her research focuses on dynamics of neural networks, particularly how neuropeptides and their interactions provide stability and flexibility of the network output. She earned her BS in biology, MS in biology with a specialization in neurobiology, and PhD in biology from the University of Cologne, in Germany.