Hughlings Jackson Lecture: Gilles Laurent

Abstract: Using our recent experimental work on cephalopod camouflage and on reptilian sleep as examples, I will try and illustrate the importance of combining not only technical approaches, but also perspectives, to understand the designs and operations of brains.

Bio: Gilles Laurent grew up in Morocco and France, and holds a doctorate in veterinary medicine and a PhD in Neuroethology. After a postdoctoral and Locke Research Fellowship of the Royal Society at the University of Cambridge (UK) he joined the Biology Division faculty at the California Institute of Technology in 1990, where he spent 20 years. In 2009, he became a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt (Germany), where he is now located.

Gilles Laurent’s interests are centered on identifying principles of brain function and circuit dynamics, using a wide range of experimental and computational approaches. His early work on insect olfaction identified low-dimensional neural manifolds as modes of organization of coding spaces in the brain. His research topics range from olfactory computation to motor control, vision (including texture perception and camouflage), sleep and brain evolution.

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