The Mind of a Fly

Neuroscientists now have a map of connections between the 140,000 neurons in a fruit fly brain. This “fly connectome” was hailed by the media as a revolutionary achievement. But can a digital map of a dead brain, no matter how detailed, really tell us about the mind of a fly? In this talk, Professor Seung will show the dazzling sights of fly neurons, and then he will help us to decipher their meaning. Just by looking and thinking, we shall come to understand some of the workings of a fly’s mind.

 

Bio:

Sebastian Seung is Professor at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Department of Computer Science. Seung has done influential research in both computer science and neuroscience. Over the past decade, he helped pioneer the new field of connectomics, developing machine learning and social computing technologies for reconstructing neural circuits from high resolution brain images. Learn more about his lab.

 

Before joining the Princeton faculty in 2014, Seung studied at Harvard University, worked at Bell Laboratories, and taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He is an External Member of the Max Planck Society, and winner of the 2008 Ho-Am Prize in Engineering.