
The University of Florida Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience Evenings at Whitney Lecture Series continues Thursday, February 13, 2025, at 6 p.m. with the program titled “The Illusion of Reliable Brain Function - How Does the Brain Detect Mistakes and Corrects Them?”. Dr. Carlos Lois, Research Professor of Biology, California Institute of Technology, will be the speaker.
This free lecture will be presented in person at the UF Whitney Laboratory Lohman Auditorium, 9505 Ocean Shore Boulevard, in St. Augustine. Those interested also have the option of registering to watch via Zoom live the night of the lecture.
Register to watch online: https://ufl.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_lF_PP70eSEqkdKynTZ0Zzg
Brain function is remarkably reliable despite the imprecise performance of neurons, and the continuous perturbations caused by aging, disease or injury. How does the brain succeed in producing stable behaviors over long periods of time despite these perturbations?
The Lois Lab is interested in studying the mechanisms by which neurons are able to “self-tune” and adapt to perturbations. To study these questions they are focusing on the song circuits of birds, because song is an extremely stereotypical behavior that can be rigorously measured.
Their recent results indicate that the brain is capable of restore function even in the absence of practice and suggest that “offline” activity, for example during sleep, can play a critical role in the ability of the brain to recover after disease or injury.
Dr. Carlos Lois studied medicine in Spain. Right after obtaining his MD he moved to the Rockefeller University where he pursued a PhD in neurobiology in the laboratory of Dr. Alvarez-Buylla studying neuronal stem cells in the brain of adult mice. He did his postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. David Baltimore, first at MIT and then at Caltech, where he developed a method to genetically manipulate animal species that were previously refractory to germline molecular manipulations, such as birds and non-human primates. Since becoming an independent investigator his lab has focused on questions related to the generation of neuronal diversity, methods to study neuronal connectivity and mechanisms of brain resilience. He is currently the Director of Chen Institute for neuroscience education and a research professor in neurobiology at Caltech.