BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk// X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:"\;Variability\, robustness and modulation in neurons and netw orks"\; - Eve Marder\, Brandeis University USA DTSTART:20170306T163000Z DTEND:20170306T180000Z UID:TALK70209@talks.cam.ac.uk CONTACT:Lyn Dakin DESCRIPTION:All individual humans and animals are different. How well-tun ed do brains need to be to produce behavior that we consider healthy and n ormal? This question has been difficult to study rigorously in animals wi th large brains\, but small nervous systems with identified neurons and ci rcuits have allowed us to ask this question in the past few years. Experi mental work on the crustacean stomatogastric ganglion (STG) has revealed a 2-6 fold variability in many of the parameters that are important for cir cuit dynamics. These include the strength of the same synapse across anim als\, the conductance densities of many membrane currents\, the copy numbe rs of the mRNA that encode those currents (Goaillard et al.\, Nat Neurosci ence. 2009) and the structures of STG neurons. At the same time\, a body of theoretical work shows that the similar network performance can arise f rom diverse underlying parameter sets (Prinz et al.\, Nat Neuroscience 200 4\; Gutierrez and Marder\, 2013). Together\, these lines of evidence sugg est that each individual animal has found a different solution to producin g “good enough” motor patterns for healthy performance in the world. These findings raise the question of the extent to which animals with diff erent sets of underlying circuit parameters can respond reliably and robus tly to environmental perturbations and neuromodulation. Consequently\, we study the effects of temperature\, pH and neuromodulation on the pyloric rhythm of crabs. We find that the signatures of how individual animals re spond to extreme perturbations are quite different even when reliable and reproducible behaviors are seen in response to graceful perturbations\, th us revealing the consequence of underlying parameter differences.\n\n LOCATION:The Hodgkin Huxley Seminar Room\, Department of Physiology Develo pment and Neuroscience END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR