The Neuroscience Institute and Center for Integrative and Translational Genomics presents:
Seth G.N. Grant, FRSE
Professor of Molecular Neuroscience
Centre for Neuroregeneration
University of Edinburgh
“How Synapse Evolution Produced Our Complex Behavior”
Friday, August 1, 2014
Link Auditorium -12PM
This lecture will address the general question: how did our behavioural repertoire originate and evolve? This question will be addressed from the perspective of molecular evolution with a focus on the postsynaptic proteome. The origin of the synapse in ancestral mechanisms in unicellular organisms will be highlighted along with the explosion of complexity in early vertebrates. Experimental genetics studies will be presented that formally test the role of synapse evolution in generating the complexity of the human cognitive repertoire.