CASELLA PRIZE: Experience, learning and synaptic plasticity: core principles of brain function
LECTIO MAGISTRALIS IN INGLESE
Di Arianna MAFFEI, PhD, Dept. of Neurobiology and Behavior, State University of New York – Stony Brook
INTRODUCE
Egidio D’ANGELO, Università di Pavia
ABSTRACT
Brain function is shaped by interactions between stimuli from the external world and the internal state of a subject. For example, the smell of food can elicit different responses if we arehungry or have just finished eating a large meal. In addition, our response to specific stimuli depends on our prior experience with them or what we have learned about them. The research has focused on investigating how experience and learning shape the connectivity and efficacy of communication between neurons in a variety of circuits including cerebellum, visual cortex and, more recently, the gustatory cortex. The goal of this work is to identify core mechanisms regulating neuronal and circuit excitability and responses to sensory experience. The focus on this work in the gustatory cortex, a region involved in the detection and encoding of both sensory and emotional (hedonic) aspects of taste. As taste guides feeding behaviors in all mammalian species, and the neural circuits for taste are highly conserved many of the mechanisms regulating the gustatory system are shared across species. Is being presented experimental evidence for the distinct circuit mechanisms regulating taste preferences early in life and in adulthood and discuss the circuit underpinning for the association of the identity of a taste with its valence, whether it is pleasant or aversive and will also show how plasticity can modify the perception of a taste by changing it from pleasurable to aversive and our current evidence about the mechanisms for this plasticity. Results of this work inform us on the relationship between neural circuit organization, taste experience and food choices.
