Past events

The ability to approach or avoid conspecifics is essential for survival in many species, and the nature of the social interaction often determines it. Positive or rewarding interactions with conspecifics lead individuals to approach them, while aversive or threatening interactions lead individuals to avoid them. The rewarding or aversive nature of these interactions is defined as social valence. I will discuss the neuronal circuits and mechanisms underlying social valance encoding.  

Perceivers experience the world around them as organized, with sensory impressions clearly separated into entities. What makes a perceptual object, and what framework relates it to its composing features? A key insight is that under natural conditions, feature and object information is acquired actively, via sensor movements. Motor and sensory variables affect one another reciprocally, forming a closed-loop system. I therefore hypothesize that percepts signifying an object emerge when the motor-sensory loop’s dynamics converge towards a stable attractor. Using snout and whisker tracking data from freely-moving behaving rats, I outline such an attractor for object detection. I demonstrate that whisker-object contact elicits robust signals on a motor-sensory phase-plane, comprised of the derivatives of whisker base-angle and base-curvature. Over consecutive contact epochs, trajectories on the phase-plane converge to a specific area. The area is characterized by a basin of attraction during contact, more so than in free-air whisking. Differences in head-movement behavior are associated with proximity to the attractor, suggesting that the animal makes use of this proposed coding-scheme. Finally, to build upon these insights, I present a novel paradigm for the study of volitional perceptual exploration, in both rewarded and unrewarded contexts. It supports high-resolution study of motor-sensory development starting at birth, throughout task-learning and until mastery. Taken together, these results highlight a novel framework for the study of the perception of features and objects as motor-sensory attractors.

Introduction: Bianca Jones Marlin, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist and Herbert and Florence Irving Assistant Professor of Cell Research at the Zuckerman Institute at Columbia University in New York City. Her research investigates how organisms unlock innate behaviors at appropriate times, and how learned information is passed to subsequent generations via transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. Dr. Marlin combines neural imaging, behavior, and molecular genetics to uncover how learned behavior in the parent can become innate behavior in the offspring— work that promises to make a profound impact on societal brain health, mental well-being, and parenting. For more information about Dr. Marlin, visit www.biancajonesmarlin.com

The ability to approach or avoid conspecifics is essential for survival in many species, and the nature of the social interaction often determines it. Positive or rewarding interactions with conspecifics lead individuals to approach them, while aversive or threatening interactions lead individuals to avoid them. The rewarding or aversive nature of these interactions is defined as social valence. I will discuss the neuronal circuits and mechanisms underlying social valance encoding.  

Perceivers experience the world around them as organized, with sensory impressions clearly separated into entities. What makes a perceptual object, and what framework relates it to its composing features? A key insight is that under natural conditions, feature and object information is acquired actively, via sensor movements. Motor and sensory variables affect one another reciprocally, forming a closed-loop system. I therefore hypothesize that percepts signifying an object emerge when the motor-sensory loop’s dynamics converge towards a stable attractor. Using snout and whisker tracking data from freely-moving behaving rats, I outline such an attractor for object detection. I demonstrate that whisker-object contact elicits robust signals on a motor-sensory phase-plane, comprised of the derivatives of whisker base-angle and base-curvature. Over consecutive contact epochs, trajectories on the phase-plane converge to a specific area. The area is characterized by a basin of attraction during contact, more so than in free-air whisking. Differences in head-movement behavior are associated with proximity to the attractor, suggesting that the animal makes use of this proposed coding-scheme. Finally, to build upon these insights, I present a novel paradigm for the study of volitional perceptual exploration, in both rewarded and unrewarded contexts. It supports high-resolution study of motor-sensory development starting at birth, throughout task-learning and until mastery. Taken together, these results highlight a novel framework for the study of the perception of features and objects as motor-sensory attractors.

Introduction: Bianca Jones Marlin, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist and Herbert and Florence Irving Assistant Professor of Cell Research at the Zuckerman Institute at Columbia University in New York City. Her research investigates how organisms unlock innate behaviors at appropriate times, and how learned information is passed to subsequent generations via transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. Dr. Marlin combines neural imaging, behavior, and molecular genetics to uncover how learned behavior in the parent can become innate behavior in the offspring— work that promises to make a profound impact on societal brain health, mental well-being, and parenting. For more information about Dr. Marlin, visit www.biancajonesmarlin.com