Albert Aguayo Lecture: Neural Networks for Navigation

Neural Networks for Navigation

Abstract: Recent studies from our lab have described how the brain of a fruit fly learns the spatial layout of new sensory environments, how the brain situates its sense of our body in the world, and how the brain guides the body toward memorized spatial goals. I will describe how these insights came from careful studies of fruit fly brain wiring diagrams at single-synapse resolution, combined with targeted monitoring of specific brain cells as flies navigated in virtual reality environments, and computational modeling work that puts these observations into a theoretical framework.

Bio: Rachel Wilson earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco. She then completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Caltech before joining the faculty at Harvard Medical School in 2004, where she is now the Joseph B. Martin Professor of Basic Research in the Field of Neurobiology. The mission of her laboratory is to understand the neural networks in the brain that underpin navigation behavior and spatial cognition.

The Albert Aguayo Lecture at The Neuro: This annual lecture honours Dr. Albert Aguayo, OC, FRCP, Professor Emeritus founder and former Director of the Centre for the Research in Neuroscience at McGill University. He is a former President of the Society for Neurosciences and the Canadian Association of Neuroscience. Dr. Aguayo also held the positions of Secretary General and President of the International Brain Research Organization ( IBRO) and been a member of many international advisory committees and editorial boards. He holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Lund (Sweden), Cordoba ( Argentina) and Queen’s and Dalhousie in Canada. Albert Aguayo’s scientific contributions concerned the regenerative capacity of the adult mammalian central nervous system

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