Each monthly brainstorming session will have two related parts. In the first, two people from two different labs will present a specific topic. In the second part, we will have a “blue skies'' discussion, something we used to do a lot more in the early days of Janelia and that we’d like to bring back now in the early days of MCN. We hope a spontaneous exchange will occur during this second part that draws out theoretical and conceptual themes, critical questions, potential experiments, tool-building opportunities, and other exciting ideas related to the topics of the presentation.
Sessions occur the third Friday (schedule permitting) of every month from 3:30PM-5:00PM
If you are interested in presenting, check out these presenter instructions and then contact Gowan and Carsen.
Brainstorm Topics
March 19, 2021. "Taking a behavioral view of neural responses in 'sensory' pathways." Michael Reiser & Carsen Stringer. [slides]
April 30, 2021. "Aggression in flies and mice: finding flexibility in ‘hard-wired’ circuits." Roian Egnor & Alice Robie. Papers: Hoopfer, Eric D. "Neural control of aggression in Drosophila." Current Opinion in Neurobiology 38 (2016): 109-118. Lischinsky Julieta E. & Lin, Dayu (2020) “Neural mechanisms of aggression across species” Nature Neuroscience, 23:1317–1328. Robie, Alice A., et al. "Machine vision methods for analyzing social interactions." Journal of Experimental Biology 220.1 (2017): 25-34.
May 21, 2021.“Cell Type Classification,” Gabriela Michel and Katie Schretter. Papers: Zeng, Hongkui, and Joshua R. Sanes. "Neuronal cell-type classification: challenges, opportunities and the path forward." Nature Reviews Neuroscience 18.9 (2017): 530-546.; Lee, Tzumin. "Wiring the Drosophila brain with individually tailored neural lineages." Current Biology 27.2 (2017): R77-R82.
June 17, 2021. “What’s the difference between Episodic memory and Semantic memory,” James Fitzgerald, Nelson Spruston, & Weinan Sun. Papers: What Learning Systems do Intelligent Agents Need? Complementary Learning Systems Theory Updated; Investigating the transition from recent to remote memory using advanced tools; The evolution of episodic memory
July 18, 2021. “MCN Brainstorm: The Tools Edition” which explores what tools may be of critical importance and are currently feasible. Alison Tebo & Loren Looger.
October 15, 2021. “The Biological Mechanisms for Observational Learning.” Yoshi Aso, Kristin Branson, Rob Johnson & Natalia Velez. Papers: Carcea, Ioana, and Robert C. Froemke. "Biological mechanisms for observational learning." Current opinion in neurobiology 54 (2019): 178-185.; Viaro, Riccardo, et al. "Neurons of rat motor cortex become active during both grasping execution and grasping observation." Current Biology (2021).; Alem et al., Associative Mechanisms Allow for Social Learning and Cultural Transmission of String Pulling in an Insect.” Plos Biol (2016)
February 18, 2022. “Naturalistic Behavior in the Lab: Understanding Foraging Behavior ” Laura Grima and Arthur Zhao. Papers: The Life of Behavior - ScienceDirect; Death Valley, Drosophila, and the Devonian Toolkit; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154617302425