Soft Matter Seminar: "Deciphering the Synaptic Contributions To Neuronal Function"

Please join the Soft Matter/Biophysics Group in welcoming Timothy A. Currier, postdoctoral scholar of neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, for his talk titled, "Deciphering the Synaptic Contributions To Neuronal Function."

Abstract: Our brains are capable of remarkable feats of computation, but the extent to which neural processing is constrained by circuit wiring remains unclear. Connectome datasets, offering descriptions of synaptic connectivity with unprecedented scope and resolution, have become a powerful tool for understanding this relationship in many animals, including the fruit fly. While these wiring diagrams have been used to predict the function of cells and circuits, the challenge of obtaining physiological recordings from many identified cell types has prevented a broad validation of this approach. To overcome this challenge, I first developed a novel method to efficiently characterize the visual selectivity of scores of cell types in the fruit fly optic lobe. Drawing on connectome data, I then quantitatively compared these measured responses to connectivity-based predictions. My results reveal that connectivity data have a surprisingly limited capacity to predict neuronal function, suggesting that other mechanisms must play a significant role in defining the brain’s computational repertoire. These findings reframe our understanding of structure and function in the brain, establishing a powerful set of constraints for improving the accuracy of future connectomic predictions in many systems.