For many animals, the sense of olfaction plays a major role in controlling sexual behaviors. Olfaction helps animals to detect mates, discriminate their status, and ultimately, decide on their behavioral output such as courtship behavior or aggression. Specific pheromone cues and receptors have provided a useful model to study how sensory inputs are converted into certain behavioral outputs. With the aid of recent advances in tools to record and manipulate genetically defined neurons, our understanding of the neural basis of sexual and social behavior has expanded substantially. I will discuss the current understanding of the neural processing of sex pheromones and the neural circuitry which controls sexual and social behaviors and ultimately reproduction, by focusing on rodent studies, mainly in mice, and the vomeronasal sensory system.

Dr. Stowers obtained her PhD at Harvard University and remained there to undertake the study of olfactory-mediated behavior with Catherine Dulac. During this time she completed experiments identifying vomeronasal organ neurons as sensors for mouse pheromones. In 2002 she began independent work at The Scripps Research Institute where she remains today. Her lab is leveraging the olfactory system to identify and study the information code that underlies emotion-linked innate behavior. She has been a Pew Scholar and a Senior Scholar in Neuroscience from the Ellison Medical Foundation.