Lectures and seminars Live stream Keynote lecture (StratNeuro retreat): "Sparse and plastic: information coding in the mushroom body calyx of Drosophila"

19-05-2022 2:00 pm Add to iCal
Online

Professor Tavosanis will give a Keynote Lecture on Thursday 19 May 2022 at 14:00, during the 2022 StratNeuro Retreat, which KI researchers who are not attending the retreat are welcome to attend virtually. Register via link.

Title

"Sparse and plastic: information coding in the mushroom body calyx of Drosophila"

Presenter

Gaia Tavosanis, Professor, Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE), University of Bonn (a NeurotechEU partner)

To identify and memorize discrete but similar environmental inputs, the brain needs to distinguish between subtle differences of activity patterns in defined neuronal populations. The Kenyon cells (KCs) of the Drosophila adult mushroom body (MB) respond sparsely to complex olfactory input, a property that is thought to support stimuli discrimination in the MB. To understand how this property emerges, we investigated the role of the inhibitory anterior paired lateral (APL) neuron in the input circuit of the MB, the calyx. Within the calyx, presynaptic boutons of projection neurons (PNs) form large synaptic microglomeruli (MGs) with dendrites of postsynaptic KCs. Combining electron microscopy (EM) data analysis and in vivo calcium imaging, we show that APL, via inhibitory and reciprocal synapses targeting both PN boutons and KC dendrites, normalizes odour-evoked representations in MGs of the calyx. APL response scales with the PN input strength and is regionalized around PN input distribution. Our data indicate that the formation of a sparse code by the KCs requires APL-driven normalization of their MG postsynaptic responses. This work provides experimental insights on how inhibition shapes sensory information representation in a higher brain centre, thereby supporting stimuli discrimination and allowing for efficient associative memory formation.

Chair

Joana Pereira, Karolinska Institutet, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, and scientific coordinator at KI for NeurotechEU. Joana will give a short introduction about the NeurotechEU alliance

Contact

Vasco Sousa Research Specialist