This seminar will be held virtually. It is free and open to all to attend. Please use this link to join: https://mit.zoom.us/j/97064691929

A modular logic of coordinated movements

Most behaviors require moving multiple body parts. For example, catching a ball involves wrist, elbow, and shoulder movements, and looking at a friend calling your name entails head and eye movements. How the brain coordinates several body parts with differing ranges of motion and reference frames in order to construct goal-directed behaviors is unknown. My lab investigates this question by applying neural ensemble recordings, perturbations, and modeling to a suite of mouse innate behaviors we have identified. In this talk, I will present findings that reveal a surprising network architecture underlying coordinated movements. 

Evan Feinberg is an Assistant Professor in the Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, and Department of Anatomy at the University of California, San Francisco. Evan received a Ph.D. from The Rockefeller University in the laboratory of Cornelia Bargmann, where he developed GFP reconstitution across synaptic partners (GRASP) to visualize synapses between defined neurons in vivo. During his postdoctoral fellowship with Markus Meister at Harvard University, Evan performed the first two-photon calcium imaging study of the superior colliculus and discovered its columnar functional architecture. As an independent investigator, Evan has received the Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award in Neurosciences and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award and additional funding from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the E.M. Ziegler, Brain & Behavior Research, Whitehall, Sandler, and Simons Foundations.