Rogue Scholar Posts

language
Published in bjoern.brembs.blog
Author Björn Brembs

It has been almost 10 years now that we have come to the realization that a particular type of our operant experiments can be classified as motor learning. In such “operant self-learning” experiments, the animal learns about the consequences of its own behavior and adjusts future behavior accordingly.

Published in bjoern.brembs.blog
Author Björn Brembs

We are looking for a PhD student interested in the functional, molecular and structural profile of neuronal circuits underlying learning, memory and behavior. In a 30-year research effort (lay summary, paper), we have recently identified a new gene (atypical PKC, aPKC) necessary for a form of motor learning in the fruit fly Drosophila and in which neurons it is required.

Published in bjoern.brembs.blog
Author Björn Brembs

I just sent the poster for this year’s Society for Neuroscience meeting to the printer. As our graduate student is preparing his defense and our postdoc did not get a visa (no thanks, US!), we just have a single poster this year and I will present it myself on Monday, November 14, 2022, 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM, on poster board WW53.

Published in bjoern.brembs.blog
Author Björn Brembs

The FoxP gene family comprises a set of transcription factors that gained fame because of their involvement in the acquisition of speech and language. While early hypotheses circulated about its function as a ‘learning gene’, a simultaneous “motor-hypothesis” stipulated that the gene may be more of a motor learning gene, involved in different kinds of motor learning, one of which is speech acquisition.

Published in bjoern.brembs.blog
Author Björn Brembs

Tomorrow we travel to the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and our diligent scientists have already printed their posters! Ottavia Palazzo will present her work on genome editing the FoxP locus of Drosophila with anatomical and behavioral characterizations of the various transgenic lines she has created.

Published in rOpenSci - open tools for open science
Author Daniel Münch

Olfactory Coding Detecting volatile chemicals and encoding these into neuronal activity is a vital task for all animals that is performed by their olfactory sensory systems. While these olfactory systems vary vastly between species regarding their numerical complexity, they are amazingly similar in their general structure.

Published in bjoern.brembs.blog
Author Björn Brembs

Few insect behaviors are more iconic than the proverbial moths circling the lamps at night. Artist: Dave McKean These observations are prime examples of the supposedly stereotypic insect responses to external stimuli. In contrast, in our new paper that just appeared today, we describe experiments suggesting that insects appear to make a value-based decision before approaching the light.

Published in bjoern.brembs.blog
Author Björn Brembs

This is our first poster at this year’s SfN meeting in San Diego. It’s about decision-making in fruit flies. We find a probabilistic form of decision-making that suggests that without understanding the mechanisms behind this fundamental uncertainty, we will never fully understand decision-making. Clicking on the image will let you download the PDF Version of the poster.

Published in bjoern.brembs.blog
Author Björn Brembs

This is a post written jointly by Nelson Lau from Brandeis and me, Björn Brembs. In contrast to Nelson’s guest post, which focused on the open data aspect of our collaboration, this one describes the science behind our paper and a second one by Nelson, which just appeared in PLoS Genetics. Laboratories around the world are generating a tsunami of deep-sequencing data from nearly every organism, past and present.

Published in bjoern.brembs.blog
Author Björn Brembs

Why our Open Data project worked, (and how Decorum can allay our fears of Open Data). I am honored to Guest Post on Björn’s blog and excited about  the interest in our work from Björn’s response to Dorothy Bishop’s first post. As corresponding author on our paper, I will provide more context to our successful Open Data experience with Björn’s and Casey’s labs.