2019 Neuroethology Gordon Research Conference & Gordon Research Seminar

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Project Summary: Funds are requested to support the 9th Gordon Research Conference (GRC) in Neuroethology, to be held July 28-August 2 at Mount Snow, West Dover Vermont, USA. Funds received from the NIH will be used solely to defray the travel and registration costs incurred by US-based students, postdocs, and other invited speakers, with preference being given to early career scientists and women. The GRC will be preceded by a two day Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) organized by two postdoctoral fellows, with support from mentors that are leaders in the field. The GRS is designed for graduate students and postdocs to discuss their current research and to network with their peers. Almost all GRS attendees with also attend the GRC. The quest to understand the biological principles that exquisitely adapt organisms to their environments and which allow them to solve complex problems, has led to unexpected insights into how similar problems can be solved and are central to the BRAIN initiative, and RFA in Multisensory Integration. Recent cutting-edge advances in neuroethological research are revealing how neural processing is modulated by physiological state such as hunger or stress, or by converging sensory modalities to control and generate complex behaviors, like locomotion, or social interactions. The 2019 GRC – whose title is Multimodal Strategies for Behavioral Control: Molecules, Neurons, Circuits, and Behavior – aims to take a multidisciplinary approach to discuss animals have evolved convergent solutions to a wide range of neurobiological challenges. The neural solutions, including the underlying circuits and genes, are most readily studied in animals that have exaggerated a particular sensory system or evolved an elaborate behavioral repertoire as an adaptation to a specific, naturally occurring niche. These adaptions are usually formed in response to varying and unpredictable sensory environments. For example, work on the specialized system in owls for finding prey has led to a general understanding of the auditory coding process and adult brain plasticity; the computational and underlying neuronal circuitry for motion vision has been most unraveled in flies, which shares computational motifs with vertebrates, the understanding of hearing in insects will likely impact the next generation of hearing aids for sound source location, and important principles of aminergic modulation of motor circuits has been recently mapped out with whole-brain imaging in zebrafish.