We will also stream this seminar via Zoom.
For the link, please contact us: pennmindcore@sas.upenn.edu

Mala Murthy
Professor of Neuroscience
Princeton University

Circuit Mechanisms for Dynamic Social Interaction

Our research explores the neural mechanisms underlying flexibility during natural social interactions – how animals process dynamic sensory cues from a partner, make decisions, and pattern the appropriate action for the current context. During Drosophila social interactions, males produce time-varying songs via wing vibration, while females arbitrate mating decisions. We discovered that male song structure and intensity are continually sculpted by the movements of the female, over timescales ranging from tens of milliseconds to minutes, and we have investigated the underlying circuit mechanisms, from visual processing to the sequencing of actions. My lab has also investigated how song representations in the female brain drive changes in her behavior, again across multiple timescales. To uncover these mechanisms, we have developed new methods for quantification and computational modeling of behavior, as well as for brain-wide neural recording, and we combine these with the genetic and neural circuit tools of the Drosophila model system. We also recently generated the first whole-brain connectome for Drosophila, and I will discuss how we are leveraging this resource, to connect circuit architecture and activity at brain scale to behavior.

A pizza lunch will be served. Please bring your own beverage.

Graduate students and postdocs are encouraged to sign up for lunch with the speaker after the seminar. Space is limited – to join, please email: pennmindcore@sas.upenn.edu

This is a joint seminar with Penn’s Data-Driven Discovery Initiative (DDDI).