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The Masakazu Konishi Endowed Lectureship in Neural Systems & Behavior
6/24/09 - 8:00 PM - Speck Auditorium
"Towards Understanding Some Simple Rules and Mechanisms of Computation in an Olfactory System"
Gilles J. Laurent, California Institute of Technology
Gilles Laurent is the Lawrence-Hanson Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, Division of Biology in Pasadena, California. In1985, Dr. Laurent received his Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from the National School of Veterinary Medicine, Toulouse, France and a Ph.D. in Neuroethology at the Université Paul Sabatier also in Toulouse. He has received numerous honors and awards. In August 2009, he will move to Frankfurt, Germany, to take a Director's position at the new Max-Planck-Institute for Brain Research.
Dr. Laurent's laboratory studies neuronal mechanisms underlying coding, perception and behavior and is particularly interested in brain circuit dynamics. His lab is presently focusing on olfactory coding and how odors are represented, learned, stored and recognized by the brain using insects (Drosophila, locusts, honey bees) and zebrafish. Dr. Laurent uses several techniques to monitor and manipulate activity in these brain circuits: intracellular, whole-cell patch-clamp, extracellulalar tetrode recordings in vivo; two-photon imaging. Having recently developed in vivo Drosophila brain electrophysiology (Rachel Wilson, Glenn Turner and Gilles Laurent, 2004), his laboratory can also now combine physiology with the tools of fly genetics. Dr. Laurent often use modeling approaches to reconstruct and explore the behavior and dynamics of olfactory circuits and test our understanding of function. Much of his theoretical work is done in collaborations with the groups of Terry Sejnowski (Salk Institute) and Henry Abarbanel and Misha Rabinovich (UCSD, Physics, Scripps).
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Dr. Masakazu "Mark" Konishi is the Bing Professor of Behavioral Biology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He has worked extensively for three decades on the auditory systems of barn owls, which can use their acute hearing to home in on mice on the ground, even in total darkness. The research has led to an understanding of how the owl's brain manages to "compute" precise locations in two dimensions, and how the neural pathways and circuits are involved. Dr. Konishi's work has implications for better understanding the human brain and perhaps even for future interventions in certain neurological disorders. Dr. Konishi received a B.S. and M.S. from Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Following post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Tubingen and Max-Planck-Institut in Germany, Dr. Konishi was appointed an assistant professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He subsequently held assistant and associate professor positions at Princeton University. He has been a professor at Caltech for the last 32 years. Dr. Konishi is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as numerous professional organizations. He has received many awards, including The Peter Gruber Prize in Neuroscience.
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