LC Seminar-Bill Kath

@12:30 in LC 101

Margaret B. Fuller Boos Professor, Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics, McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University https://people.esam.northwestern.edu/~kath/ and Deputy Director at the National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology.NITMB Kath - Google Scholar

Title: Modeling the fly thermosensory system

Abstract: Drosophila melanogaster is a model animal of choice for the study of neural systems. Fly brains are much smaller than those of mammals, yet flies are still capable of quite complicated behaviors. In addition, they are poikilotherms, meaning they cannot regulate their body temperature except through behavior; as a result, temperature manipulations can produce rapidly observed reactions. This talk will discuss mathematical and computational modeling that integrates different data types (elecrophysiology, connectomics and behavior) with the goal of understanding how information is processed within the fly thermosensory system. While simple innate behaviors such as avoidance of hot temperature might be thought of as hard-wired and largely inflexible, the studies show that Drosophila exhibits unexpected plasticity and that the neural circuits governing these behaviors are more complex than they might seem at first glance.