Department of Psychology

University of Toronto

presents

Junchul Kim

Harvard University

(Behavioural Neuroscience Candidate)

on the topic of:

“Linking genetically defined neuron types to specific behaviors”

Abstract: One of the most fundamental challenges facing clinical and basic neuroscience is to define which neuron subtypes underlie specific behaviors or physiological processes. Indeed, tools enabling such functional mapping are in need and under development in various forms. We have developed new genetic methods for silencing virtually any neuron subtype of choice in the living mouse and studying the consequences. Strengths of the method include that it is both highly cell-type selective and highly versatile, thus offering simultaneously broad applicability and high resolution. Utility of the method has been demonstrated in a range of different neural systems in the mouse (from cerebellar granule cells to Purkinje cells to specific subtypes of serotonergic neurons to silencing all neurons en masse), using a range of assays (from behavioral to histological to electrophysiological). Of the behavioral phenotypes observed upon en masse serotonergic silencing, only one mapped to the combinatorially defined subset. These findings provide evidence for parceling of certain behaviors (anxiety-related behaviors, aspects of fear conditioning, or sensorimotor gating of the acoustic startle response) to distinct genetically defined subtypes of serotonergic neurons in the brain.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

10:00 am

Psychology Lounge, (SSH4043)