U.S.-Australia Cooperative Research: Neural Connectivity and Processing in the Crustacean Brain

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This grant provides eight months of support for the U.S. PI to visit her Australian colleague, Dr. David Sandeman of the Zoology Department at the University of New South Wales. The investigators will concentrate on problems of connectivity and physiology in organized synaptic regions in the crustacean brain, known as the accessory lobes. The functional role of the accessory lobes, among the largest synaptic regions in many decapod brains, currently is not well understood. No sensory neurons project to these regions, and no motor neurons have synaptic fields in the accessory lobes. This situation has led to much speculation as to the function of the accessory lobes and to the suggestions that these are "associative" regions. It is interesting to note that accessory lobes are a unique feature of those decapods that have adopted a benthic life style. Electro-physiological and dye injection methods will be used to examine the imput-output relationships of the accessory lobe in the Australian fresh-water crayfish Cherax destructor. The investigators expect that these studies will lead to a clearer understanding of the functional role of this area of the crustacean brain, which may serve as a model for understanding vertebrate brains. Both investigators have been well funded for their work: Sandeman by the Australian Research Council and Beltz mostly by NIH. Dr. Beltz has a Presidential Young Investigator award from NSF's Neuroscience Program.