Individuality

Individuality is an intrinsic and essential aspect of mammalian behavior that emerges even in genetically identical organisms experiencing the same environmental conditions1. In the International Brain Laboratory, over one hundred mice were trained on a visual decision-making task with the explicit goal of establishing a rigorously standardized experimental protocol. This effort led to an automated pipeline that produced trained mice whose behavior was indistinguishable across seven different labs, when considering trial-level descriptors of behavior. Nevertheless, substantial inter-individual

The goal of neuroscience is to understand how the nervous system controls behaviour, not only in the simplified environments of the lab, but also in the natural environments for which nervous systems evolved. In pursuing this goal, neuroscience research is supported by an ever-larger toolbox, ranging from optogenetics to connectomics. However, often these tools are coupled with reductionist approaches for linking nervous systems and behaviour. This course will introduce advanced techniques for measuring and analysing behaviour, as well as three fundamental principles as necessary to understan

…or anatomical underpinnings of this individuality, though previous work implicates sensory periphery. Drosophila olfaction presents an ideal model to study the biological basis of behavioural individuality, because while the neural circuit underlying olfactory behaviour is well-described and highly stereotyped, persistent idiosyncrasy in behaviour, neural coding, and neural wiring have also been described. Projection neurons (PNs), which relay odor signals sensed

…Where might such individuality come from? Neither genes nor the environment directly encode behaviour. They encode or influence processes, notably the development of neuronal circuits, that in turn control behaviour. An understanding of how neuronal circuits develop and function at the individual organism level is therefore essential