Physics Colloquium: How brains add vectors

The Department of Physics is pleased to welcome Dr. Gaby Maimon for an in-person colloquium. Dr. Gaby Maimon is an Associate Professor Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Rockefeller University. Prof. Maimon has a longstanding interest in integrative/cognitive brain processes.

In graduate school, he aimed to better understand how actions are initiated via neurophysiological recordings in awake, behaving monkeys. As a postdoc, he transitioned to studying Drosophila, where he developed a preparation that allows one to record the electrical activity of neurons during locomotor (tethered flight or walking) behavior for the first time. His lab uses this preparation, alongside behavioral and anatomical experiments, to understand how fly brains calculate and remember the value of quantitative internal variables––particularly navigational variables––and use these to guide behavior. The long-term goal of this work is to develop a deeper, cellular and molecular level, understanding of higher brain functions. Such an understanding in a tiny brain could provide a blueprint for more complete understandings of cognitive brain functions in larger brains, such as our own.

Abstract: Many cognitive computations rely on the nervous system estimating mathematical vectors, but aside from computer models, how brains represent vectors or perform vector operations remains unknown. In this talk, Maimon will describe how the fly brain performs vector arithmetic, in the context of spatial navigation. The central features of this vector calculator inside the insect brain may generalize to other nervous systems and other cognitive domains beyond navigation where vector operations are required.