ISN Newsletter - July 1998

Newsletter - July 1998

Section 2

2001 Congress of ISN
Research Group Report ~ Neurobiology of Sensory Systems
Autobiographical Sketch ~ Pursuing the Scent Trail
Research group report: From mountains to madness
Courses, Meetings, and Workshops
Positions

2001 Congress of ISN

We have received two proposals for the 2001 ISN Congress, one in Bonn and the other from Amsterdam. These will be discussed and voted upon at Business Meeting in La Jolla in July.

Bonn

I would like to invite the ISN to hold its 2001 Congress in Bonn, Germany. Together with my colleagues Heinz-Georg Heinzel from the University of Bonn and Wolfgang Walkowiak from the nearby University of Cologne, I would be happy to organize the meeting and to raise money from the German Science Foundation and other sources to keep down costs and still have a very good and exciting program. As you probably know, there is a rich tradition of neuroethology in our country. Needles to say that there are many strong and active neuroethology groups in Germany and other European countries.

We would be honored to have the ISN meeting for a second time in Germany. For several reasons we think that Bonn would be a favorable place for the next Congress:

Bonn is in the midst of Europe and can easily be reached by train or plane from members of all other European countries.
Our friends and colleagues from the US, Canada, Japan and all other countries can reach Germany via relatively inexpensive flights, which are especially available outside the tourist season. From the international airports in Frankfurt and Duesseldorf the city of Bonn can be reached within 40 to 70 minutes via fast ICE-trains that depart nearly every 30 minutes. In addition there is the national/international airport Bonn/Wahn. A 30-minute bus ride connects this airport with downtown Bonn.
We have facilities on campus to house and feed the participants in the Congress as well as to hold the scientific sessions during any week in the summer from mid-July until October 15. All lecture rooms are free of charge. On campus, 250 student apartment rooms (each with a shower and a toilet) are available this summer for US $150 per week, as well as accommodations in a guest house at US $60 per night for up to 140 people, with the prices about 20% lower for those who are willing to share rooms. Meals (lunch and dinner) are available at the campus dining rooms at about US $12 per day. These numbers already take into account that the prices will increase somewhat in the next 3 years.
For those who want more elegant accommodations, Bonn has reasonably priced (about US $70-150 per night) hotels, many of which are in the immediate vicinity of the university. The Tourism and Congress GmbH of Bonn will handle all the hotel arrangements for us free of charge. For a small fee this agency is happy to arrange for any excursions we might want.

Based on conversations with these people and with members of the administration of the University of Bonn, as well as our commitment to raise money, we are confident that we can keep the registration costs to around US $100. That fee would include a banquet at the famous Petersberg Hotel, which for many years was the guest house of the German government. This figure does not, however, include funds for subsidizing plenary and symposium speakers.

Last but not least I would like to stress that the campus of the Rheinische-Friedrich-Wilhelms University is located close to the river Rhein. The mountains of the Eifel and the Siebengebirge and the famous Rhein valley are close by and offer ample opportunities for biological and cultural excursions and for recreation. In addition the cathedral in Cologne, a favorite tourist attraction in our area, is only a 20-minute train ride away. No question, we cannot compete with the climate of San Diego, but summer weather in Bonn is usually pleasant with daytime temperatures around 22 to 25 degrees C.

I hope our proposal will convince the members of ISN that there are many good reasons for having the next Neuroethology conference in Bonn, Germany. If so we are happy to serve the Society by organizing the 2001 Congress.

Prof. Dr. H. Bleckmann, Zoologisches
Institut der Universität Bonn

Amsterdam

We would like to invite the ISN to hold its Sixth International Congress of Neuroethology in Amsterdam in 2001, preferably in August. All activities can be taken care of by the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, conveniently located in the southern part of Amsterdam near the International Airport Schipol, which is easily reached from most places in the world. To go by train from the VU to the airport takes only 25 minutes. Furthermore, there is good connection from the VU to all parts of Amsterdam via tramway, subway, or a bus system including the Amsterdam central station (15 minutes) and downtown Amsterdam (20 minutes).

The VU has facilities on the campus to concentrate all scientific activities in the main building. There is the Aula with room for 900 people, three lecture halls to take 200-350 people each, and three lecture halls with 50-100 seats. There are several cafeterias, and all meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) are available in the University student restaurant at different rates depending on everyone's taste. Prices for lunch are between US $5 and US $15, a three-course dinner costs around US $13.

Housing facilities on the campus are available at a rate of US $45 per night. Accommodation in reasonable, middle-class hotels near the campus and in downtown Amsterdam is easily possible. For instance, hotel-prices in town fall in the range US $45-75 per night room-sharing, off course, would make it considerably cheaper). As already pointed out the VU can be reached in short time from downtown Amsterdam. And not to forget, Amsterdam is at day and night one of the most attractive and charming cities within Europe. Its museums and cafes have a lot to offer for those who are tired from the Congress or who would like to continue their discussions after the schedule in a stimulating environment.

The Conference Service of the VU will be in charge of all organizational work. The Conference Service suggested a conference registration fee of about US $200, based on about 500 participants. This would cover costs for lecture rooms, poster boards, technical equipment, Congress announcements, printing of the programme and abstract booklet, coffee and tea breaks, lunches, a welcome reception, as well as the general organization of the Congress (e.g. registration, hotel reservations). Of course, the cost would be considerably lower if the number of participants increases. In addition, we hope to raise money to lower the total costs of the meeting.

We believe that the VU, owing to its modern facilities and location, offers a very pleasant place for an event like the ISN Congress in order to maintain The Netherlands' long-standing tradition of neuroethology in Amsterdam.

Manfred Gahr and Andries Ter Maat
Department of Developmental Neurobiology
Faculty of Biology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

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Research Group Report ~ Neurobiology of Sensory Systems

Friedrich G. Barth
Biozentrum, Institut für Zoologie,
Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria
friedrich.g.barth@univie.ac.at

In Vienna, our business is arthropod sensory systems and our goal is to understand both the workings of various biosensors and the function of the sensory systems of which they are a part. Our view is organismic, and our analyses are related to several organizational levels, from the cellular to the ecological. What is the role of a particular sensory system in behavior, and how might it be adapted to behaviorally and ecologically meaningful stimulus situations? To find the answers to such questions requires a blend of research in sensory physiology and biophysics and sensory ecology and neuroethology, as well as both lab and field work. This is why we refer to our work as neurobiology instead of just neurophysiology or neuroethology.

We have been following this broad organismic path for quite some time using spiders of the genus Cupiennius as our primary experimental animals. We are trying to understand cuticular strain detection, vibration sense and vibratory communication, vision, air movement detection, temperature and humidity sense, and chemoreception. We have addressed questions on stimulus uptake and transformation, on signal recognition and signal localization, and on the mechanisms underlying oriented behavior and communication. The analysis of complex natural stimuli and their relationship to the fine tuning of sensory systems has been a focus throughout our studies. Ultimately, we hope to understand the sensory world seen by our experimental animals through their highly selective sensory windows and to gain insight into the reason for their evolutionary existence.

Spiders are the main players of the game. They have outstanding sensory capabilities used for the guidance of elaborate behavior. The Cupiennius species studied most intensively are large (leg span about 10 cm) Central American hunting spiders that we breed in large numbers. If you don't like spiders, come and let us indoctrinate you just a little bit. You will be quickly converted into an araneophilic.

Our current research projects cluster around: (1) mechanoreception (including biomechanics and communication), (2) vision, and (3) humidity, temperature and chemical reception. This also reflects the subgroups formed by the roughly 20 people in the department under Axel Schmid (project 2), Harald Tichy (project 3), and myself (project 1).

(1) Mechanoreception and Related Topics

Arthropod touch reception. Over the past years, much of our research (together with Pepe Humphrey) concentrated on the analysis of air movement detection using Cupiennius with its close to 1,000 air movement sensors (trichobothria) as the model case. Recently, we redirected the main thrust of our "hairy neurobiology" toward touch reception, something that has never been studied in detail in arthropods. We are intrigued by the enormous diversity of the several 105 mechanosensitive hairs covering the cuticular surface of Cupiennius (and many other arthropods). How is information on complex stimulus patterns gained in the sensory periphery, processed by interneurons, and used in the organism's behavior? The first step taken is to map the distribution of the morphological, mechanical, and physiological properties of the different hair types. From this, patterns will emerge that reflect properties of the tactile stimuli relevant for the different body regions. Following a long tradition in our group, an engineer, Hans-Erich Dechant, is part of the touch crew, together with Jörg Albert, Oliver Friedrich, and Thomas Fenzl.

Vibratory communication in stingless bees. The emotional root for this project is love for bees since my young days when I trained them on the roof of the Munich Observatory for Martin Lindauer to find out more about the then little understood polarized light vision. Years of research on vibration reception and vibratory communication in spiders provide a more scientific background. Both our field work in Brazil and the laboratory work centered around recruitment behavior and the ways information on a food source is passed on by the foragers to the followers. The first round of this project was carried out by Stefan Jarau and Michael Hrncir, kindly hosted by Ronaldo Zucchi in Brazil.

Spider webs. The web of orb-weaving spiders is a superb lightweight structure serving two main functions: to trap insect prey and to extend the spider's vibrational environment. We are interested in both the architectural and the sensory aspects. After having dealt with "normal" orb webs, we have now extended our studies to web modifications. The main focus is currently on vibration transmission through the web and the use spiders make of the vibratory information received through the web. A particular attraction of this topic is the comparative approach and the intriguing physics of the webs that is still far from being fully understood. More recently, Barbara Lus, Klaus Wassermann, and Birgit Bauer have participated in the web work.

(2) Vision

After having examined the fine structure, optics, spectral sensitivity, and neuroanatomy of the visual pathways (with important input from Eisuke Eguchi, Mike Land,and Nick Strausfeld ), our primary concern at the moment is to learn about the behavioral importance of visual information in a nocturnal spider whose behavior is dominated by the mechanical senses but who still has a highly developed visual system. This is the domain of Axel Schmid who started his work using immunocytochemistry to map the distribution of various neuroactive substances in the brain and to reveal the neurons interconnecting the sensory input with the motor output.

Ontogeny. How does the visual system change during ontogeny from a freshly hatched Drosophila-sized spiderling to an adult animal with a leg span of about 10 cm,after an increase in size of about 60-fold and a significant change in life style? This is studied by Christine Becherer using neuroanatomy and behavioral experiments.

Visually guided orientation. Both the optics of the eight eyes of Cupiennius and their physiological sensitivity suggest highly developed visual capabilities. Twofold simultaneous choice experiments demonstrated that the principal eyes serve a target-discrimination mechanism, whereas the secondary eyes (apart from other functions) serve a simple target-detection mechanism. The retinae of the principal eyes can be moved in spiders. Florian Kaps examined this phenomenon (saccades) in Cupiennius by recording the activity of the eye muscles in behaving spiders.

(3) Humidity, temperature, and Chemical Sense

Chemical sense. In Cupiennius, vibratory courtship of the male is elicited by a sex pheromone on female silk. The pheromone is identified in cooperation with chemists Stefan Schulz and Miriam Papke (Hamburg) and Ewald Gingl does the electrophysiology of the pheromone receptors.

Multimodality. From a wealth of multimodal inputs, arthropods have to either pick out one modality or to somehow take a combined measure of what is going on. Harald Tichy and his students are interested in how neurons in the cockroach central nervous system receiving convergent input from olfactory, mechanical, temperature, and humidity stimulation integrate these inputs and whether integration provides responses differing from those evoked by stimuli of each modality alone. The big question is how multimodal information is processed.

Hygro- and Termoreceptors. Hygro- and thermosensitive sensilla enable spiders (and insects) to avoid physiological stress by choosing a habitat with humidity and temperature in the preferred range. Harald Tichy and his students Manfred Zeiner and Norbert Teufelbauer determine the responses of hygro- and thermoreceptors in cockroaches (after also having studied Cupiennius). The main thrust of this work is to understand the significance of the bimodality found in the receptors when they are exposed to changes in humidity and temperature. As known from meteorology, humidity and temperature in the air close to the ground vary continuously at frequencies up to about 10 Hz. By examining the effect of such changes on the activity of hygro- and thermoreceptors, we hope to find out the significance of the information provided by them under the relevant ecological conditions.

We are also strongly committed to teaching. Vienna University has a total of 90,000 students and about 450 beginners in biology every year. The topics taught by us are general zoology, animal physiology, and neurobiology with various ramifications. Research funding mainly comes from the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF). We profit a lot from national and international collaborations and enjoy having many visitors from abroad. Come and see us, too. Vienna is worth the trip.

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Autobiographical Sketch ~ Pursuing the Scent Trail

Dr. Mimi Halpern
Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology
SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn
Brooklyn, NY USA
mhalpern@netmail.hscbklyn.edu

My journey onto a scientific career began as a high school student when my curiosity was piqued by an observation of differences in math ability in my male and female classmates. I hypothesized at the time that this difference might be related to the kinds of toys girls and boys played with. I decided that when I grew up I would design children's toys that would equalize math abilities between the sexes.

I arrived at Oberlin College in 1954 committed to a psychology major and realizing that I would have to learn about psychological development if I was to pursue my avowed goal. During my four years at Oberlin I had the good fortune to work with Loche VanAtta, who introduced me to physiological psychology and guided my research project on the effects on rat avoidance behavior of the tranquilizing drug Librium, which was then undergoing laboratory testing. That research experience convinced me that my real interest was understanding how the brain governed behavior.

My thesis work at Adelphi University under the supervision of Melvin Lyon described the effects of central gray matter lesions on escape and avoidance behavior of rats. That work led to an interest in the limbic system, which I pursued in the laboratory of Walter Riss at Downstate Medical Center. Walter was principal investigator on a grant modestly entitled "Evolution of the Limbic System." (Try to get that title past a study section today!) My role on that project was to investigate the projections of the medial-dorsal quadrant of the telencephalon of frogs, the so-called primordium hippocampi, with the use of degeneration staining techniques. Unfortunately, at that time. the degeneration staining techniques were not well suited to work with unmyelinated pathways, and I was sorely frustrated in my attempts to solve the problem of whether the primordium hippocampi did in fact share connections in common with the hippocampus of other species. I was further stymied by my inability to obtain from the frogs reliable behavior with which to combine neuroanatomic studies with behavioral studies.

In the late 1960s, there was a burgeoning interest in comparative neuroanatomy, and I determined to move from amphibians to reptiles to find a species in which I could combine my interests in the anatomy of the limbic system and behavioral analysis. Several concurrent influences led to my work on the snake vomeronasal system. At the time I was making the transition from amphibians to reptiles, Frank Scalia and Sarah Winans, then both at Downstate, were conducting their pioneering studies on the dual olfactory system. Phillip Ulinski, then at the University of Chicago, had recently published his study of the nucleus sphericus of boa, and Gordon Burghardt was reporting studies on the hereditability and sensory control of snake prey preferences. When I prepared my first series of garter snake brains, I was struck by the incredible size of the snake vomeronasal organ, accessory olfactory bulb and nucleus sphericus, and hypothesized that the system to which these three structures belonged must be of critical importance to the survival of garter snake individually and as a species.

As luck would have it, shortly after embarking on my first experimental neuroanatomic studies of the garter snake brain, a graduate student in our Biological Psychology program approached me for a summer laboratory rotation. This student was John Kubie, my first graduate student. John's thesis work subsequently demonstrated the critical nature of the garter snake's vomeronasal system in prey trailing and response to sex pheromones. These studies used behavioral training techniques that permitted manipulation of stimulus parameters; preoperative and postoperative testing in thesame animals, allowing us to use each animal as its own control; and histological verification of lesions. We also demonstrated, using autoradiographic techniques, the importance of the tongue flick in delivering odorants to the vomeronasal organ. One of the exciting outcomes of the prey-trailing experiments was the observation that snakes required direct contact with the prey trail and that tongue flick rates and tongue flick types varied as a function of extract concentration and testing environment. Another major finding was that the vomeronasal system imparted reinforcing value on prey stimuli. For example, in the absence of a functional vomeronasal system, snakes eventually extinguished their prey attack behavior.

I have been blessed over the years with a series of outstanding graduate students, postdoctoral trainees and collaborators who have moved the story of the snake vomeronasal system to what it is today, a premier model for neuroethological research in the chemical senses. In addition to the neuroanatomic and behavioral studies (Steve Heller) we conducted over the years, we have described the ultrastructure of the snake vomeronasal organ and its regenerative capacity (Ruu Tong Wong), the central connections (Enrique Lanuza) and ontogenetic development (David Holtzman) of the system, and characterized some of its electrophysiological properties (Jun Inouchi, Cheng-shu Li, and Mutsuo Taniguchi). These electrophysiological studies have demonstrated that nonvolatiles, delivered in a liquid medium to the vomeronasal organ, are adequate stimuli and that volatile odorants delivered in a gaseous state are poor stimuli for activating the vomeronasal system.

Working with my collaborator Dalton Wang, we have purified, characterized, and cloned the gene for at least one chemoattractant from prey products (Xian-Cheng Jiang and Weimin Liu). We are in the process of describing the signal transduction pathway involved in responding to this prey product (Yongquon Liu and Jinming Liu).

Among our major current interests is the isolation of the vomeronasal receptor for prey chemicals. Another major effort in our laboratory is the full elucidation of the central pathways subserving tongue flicking in response to volatile and nonvolatile stimuli.

I consider myself particularly fortunate because I have been able to pursue a dream of understanding how the nervous system mediates behavioral responses to environmental stimuli. In this work, due to the skills and training of my students, trainees, and collaborators, I have been able to go well beyond my own limitations in training. As I see it, this is the goal of neuroethology: to take a naturally occurring behavior and analyze its neural basis with the use of whatever techniques and disciplines are necessary to answer the question being asked.

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Research group report: From mountains to madness

Edwin W. Rubel
Department of Otolaryngology
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 USA
rubel@u.washington.edu

Snowmass Lake, a spectacular mountain lake full of trout and surrounded by 14,000 foot peaks, is located past the Maroon Bells and over Trailriders Pass outside of Aspen. We get there from an isolated dude ranch, located 15 miles road down a terrible, half way between Carbondale and Aspen. We walk or ride horses past Snowmass campground, then up a steep 5-mile trail; and then feast your eyes.

I needed to pack gear, get horses ready, etc.; and oh yes, find a book to read while the visitors were hiking and fishing. Surveying the bookshelf, not recognizing titles (not a reader), I grabbed King Solomon's Ring (by Konrad Lorenz), and was off for two days with a family of visitors for the six mile ride to Snowmass Lake. It was a month in the mountains after my first year as a graduate student in Psychology, with still little idea what to be when I grew up; an Industrial Psychologist, a rat runner, a math modeler? No telling, but not a Vietnam soldier and I couldn't cut the mustard as a line-backer for "da Bears."

Lorenz's book did it; I instantly knew. Back at Michigan State, I ran to Stan Ratners office and stocked up; Tinbergen, von Frisch, Favre, etc. How does one study real behaviors of real animals, not rats running a maze or escaping from terrible shock? How do these behaviors develop? And most important, how does the environment sculpt the brain so different animals perceive the world and its challenges for survival (and sex) differently? There were mountains of information to learn about the brain, about behavior, about development; and no Neuroscience Graduate Program! Why not make one for myself? Jack Johnson could teach me about electrophysiology and comparative neurobiology; the Zoology Department (Jack King, Lynn Clemens) could teach me about animal behavior; Marty Balaban could guide my reading in neuroembryology; and Glen Hatton could help me put it all together. I could work on brain development, and Gilbert Gottlieb could invite me to North Carolina for long, nightly discussions (with our friend Jack D.) about how to think about the problems of perception development, brain development and experience.

Flash to now. What do we do and why? The Rubelab is an interdisciplinary group, hopelessly embedded in several other neuroscience and behavior groups at the University of Washington. Over the 30 years since that eventful trip to Snowmass Lake (no, I haven't been back), four lines of research have emerged. Three are still intimately tied to my original goals of understanding the ontogeny of perceptual systems (particularly the auditory system) and one has a distinct clinical goal. Ill not discuss the methods we use in any detail as they change from year-to-year, project-to-project, and person-to-person. Suffice it to say that methods follow the problem; in a great research environment like the University of Washington, it is virtually always possible to find a colleague willing to teach us the method of choice and keep us honest in its appropriate (and inappropriate) uses.

One of the original problems we sought to approach was to understand the neural basis underlying the ontogeny of perception. I chose the auditory system for several reasons: i) relatively few people were working on its development; ii) it seemed to be a friendly enclave of science; iii) we knew something about how the major physical dimensions of sound (frequency and intensity) were encoded at the periphery and the physical parameters that must be computed to derive the location of a sound source. In addition, the physical separation of the receptor surface from the brain and its various levels of coding seemed an advantage compared to the visual system when our major tool at the time was extracellular single unit recording. Birds were chosen because of elegant work being done on the ontogeny of auditory perception of naturalistic calls by my friend and intellectual mentor, Gilbert Gottlieb. We began with a series of physiological and behavioral studies on the maturation of auditory responses, and the coding properties of brainstem auditory neurons. Two observations led to our present work. First, the major structural and physiological properties determining central processing seemed to be developed prior to, and awaiting development of the periphery. That is, it was difficult to find developmental changes uniquely attributable to brain maturation that were correlated with obvious changes in perceptual behavior of birds or mammals. Second, in the early 1980s, Brenda Ryals, Bill Lippe and I discovered that there appeared to be an ontogenetic shift in the place/frequency code in the avian cochlea during the early stages of hearing development. This finding explained a long-standing paradoxical relationship physiological/behavioral development of auditory responses and morphological development of the cochlea in birds and mammals. Our observations in the chick were quickly replicated and extended in a variety of mammalian species. Thus, we seemed to have stumbled onto a rather general principle of hearing development. Currently, and over the past few years, Susan Norton, Rudolf Rubsamen, David Mills and I have been using a variety of physiological and acoustical techniques to examine the relative contributions of passive mechanics and the outer hair cell driven cochlear amplifier system to (active mechanics) functional development of the gerbil inner ear. A major goal of these studies has been to understand the cellular basis underlying the developmental shift in the frequency/place representation. I think we've conclusively shown that this process is linked to changes in the macromechanics, to the stiffness and mass of the basal half of the cochlea and that the cochlear amplifier goes along for the ride. Maybe its now time to return to our original problem. How does the ontogeny of the central nervous system contribute to the development of hearing?

The second area of research in our laboratory attempts to probe the cellular mechanisms whereby experience influences the ontogeny of a neural circuit. Rather than choosing a particular behavior or physiological property and altering the sensory input, we chose a more fundamental, albeit artificial, approach. We've asked the question, how do changes in the amount or pattern of excitatory activity impinging on a well-defined neural circuit at different times in development alter the cellular structure of the target neurons and glial cells. Using the unique and well defined neuronal pathways of the of the avian and mammalian brainstem auditory system, we've been able to examine the nature of the presynaptic signal regulating the structure of postsynaptic neurons, and began to understand the cellular chain of events which lead to deprivation-induced cell death, cell atrophy or dendritic changes. In addition, we are now using a variety of mutant mice to understand the cellular basis of a "critical periods" of differential sensitivity to peripheral manipulations. By mimicking in vivo experiments with manipulations of in vitro brainstem slice preparations we can examine the dynamic regulation of intracellular signaling pathways to discovery the essential role of presynaptic activity in the regulation of intracellular calcium [Ca²⁺]i homeostasis and the role of [Ca²⁺] in the regulation of cellular integrity.

The elegantly simple and stereotyped properties of the avian brainstem auditory pathways, from the inner ear to nucleus magnocellularis and from n. magnocellularis bilaterally to nucleus laminaris, also provide unique opportunities for the study of neuroembryology. Over the past 20 years, we've examined the structural and functional ontogeny of this neural network from the birthdays of the neurons in the rhombic lip of 3 - 4 day embryos to mature synaptic and auditory function. Our current interest is discovering the cellular and molecular events guiding the orderly development of stereotyped bilateral terminal arbors projecting from n. magnocellularis to n. laminaris. What makes these arbors arrive at exactly "the right" tonotopic position, remain segregated, and spread anisotropically along isofrequency lines? How do they communicate with each other or their target, n. laminaris neurons, to form this elegant computational network? These questions are ultimately addressable only by vital imaging of labeled growing cells in situ and manipulations of molecules in the microenvironment of the growing tissue. A well studied system, intracellular markers, and powerful imaging methods make all of this possible today; although not a low budget endeavor.

Finally, a little over ten years ago, our lab (and our colleague, Doug Cotanche) were fortunate to stumble onto the discovery that birds regenerate hair cells in the auditory and vestibular portions of their inner ears after the native hair cells are lost due to noise exposure or drugs. Subsequent research by our group and many others has shown that the new hair cells restore the sensory epithelium to nearly its original pristine state and restore hearing and balance. This marked the birth of a new field of research; and we were in the thick of it. It opened the door to new approaches to old questions. Can songbirds learn a new song if they have a new cochlea? Sarah Woolley is addressing this in Bengalese finches. Can we study the development of hair cells in an otherwise mature epithelium? Anastasia Pantelias has chosen this problem. Of course, the central question that excited our interest and that of the public was and is, if birds can rebuild a new receptor surface after damage, why cant we? Liz Oesterle, Terry Tsue, Jennifer Stone and others have developed new preparations and done a variety of studies to address this question in two ways. First, if we learn enough about hair cell regeneration in birds, can we transfer that knowledge toward understanding what's "wrong" with us and other mammals? Second, can we "trick" the mammalian sensory epithelium into mimicking the bird response? To address these questions, we've formed "the hair club consortium" at the University of Washington, made up of people from our group as well as Tom Rehs lab and Mark Bothwell's lab. Studies on birds suggest that a number of growth factors and cytokines can regulate entry of supporting cells into the cell cycle (e.g. IGF1, FGFs) and the notch, delta, jagged family may be involved in exciting the cell cycle, and differentiation. Mammalian studies were stimulated by Mark Warchol and Jeff Corwin's discovery of an in vitro proliferative response in the guinea pig utricle after aminoglycoside treatment, and by Liz Oesterle and Paul Lambert demonstrating proliferation induction by TGFa. These data are encouraging by showing that mammalian supporting cells in the vestibular epithelium can proliferate. But regeneration is far from complete and proliferation is not reliably robust. Experiments on postnatal mammalian cochlea, until recently, were more disappointing in that reliable proliferation of cells in the organ of Corti had not been shown. However, our group and a group at the House Ear Institute have recently found robust proliferation of organ of Corti supporting cells in 10 day old and adult mice lacking a particular cell cycle regulatory gene. These exciting results give me some (guarded) confidence that it will eventually be possible to regenerate hair cells in the organ of Corti of mammals, including humans. Today and tomorrow we will be concentrating on the regulation of cell cycle behavior in the organ of Corti.

It's both fun and frustrating to work on so many different programs in one lab. It has the advantage of combining people with diverse scientific interests and abilities, but the disadvantage of never knowing enough and becoming a madhouse of ideas, animals and people with widely differing agendas. But that's what we do here in the Rubelab, where "the electricity runs 24 hours a day" and "data talk, while theories walk."

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Material for future newsletters

Send news, job advertisements, meeting announcements and other related information for the next newsletter (to be published in early November) to Arthur Popper at: ap17@umail.umd.edu. All material should be sent via E-mail.

Advertisements for jobs and graduate/postdoctoral positions should be no more than 150 words. Suggestions for feature articles, including autobiographical sketches, research group reports, and Neuroethological Viewpoints, should also be sent to Art Popper. However, please do not submit full articles of this type without a response from the Editorial Board. Feature articles may be up to 1,500 words in length. We aso welcome research commentaries, book reviews, and other material that might be of interest to the ISN community. These should be no longer than 450 words in length, and should only submitted after consultation with the editor.

Courses, meetings, workshops

SENSORY ECOLOGY - HOW ORGANISMS ACQUIRE AND RESPOND TO INFORMATION. The course will include lectures on ecological. physiological and morphological aspects of the senses; Vision, Olfaction, Hearing, Mechanosensation and Magnetosensation. How the senses are used in orientation and communication in organisms from fungi and bacteria to birds and mammals will be discussed specifically. Experts in the different areas, e.g. Drs. R. Wehner, T. Reuter, F. Barth, M. Burrows, M. Stoddart, T. Alerstam, D. -E. Nilsson, A. Michelsen, C. Lefstedt, E. Warrant,. R. Hudson, K. Donner , A.-M. Surlykke, S. Akesson and B. S. Hansson, will lecture. Ample time will be set aside for discussions. Practical demonstrations and a field excursion are scheduled. Participants: The course is aimed at graduate (PhD) students in biological disciplines and is limited to 30 participants. Location: Dept. of Ecology, Lund Univ., Sweden. Time: October 12 - 24, 1998, full time. Language: English. Organizer: Dr. Bill S. Hansson. Tuition fee: 2000 Swedish crowns including excursion. Interested participants are kindly requested to sign up before August 10, 1998 to: Dr. Bill S. Hansson, Dept. of Ecology, Lund Univ., S-223 62 Lund, Sweden. Phone: +46 46 2223773, fax: +46 46 2224716 Email: bill.hansson@zooekol.lu.se; www.pheromone.ekol.lu.se/sensory.html

Conference on ADVANCING FROM THE VENTRAL STRIATUM TO THE EXTENDED AMYGDALA: IMPLICATIONS FOR NEUROPSYCHIATRY AND DRUG ABUSE. Date: Oct 18-21, 1998. Place: Charlottesville, Virginia. Theme: the anatomy and function of the basal forebrain systems implicated in neuropsychiatric and addictive disorders. Contact: New York Academy of Sciences, Science and Technology Meetings Dept., 2 East 63rd Street, NY, NY 10021. phone: (212) 838.0230, ext. 324; FAX: (212)838.5640; email: conference@nyas.org; www: http://www.nyas.org - Click on Science and Technology, Meetings, click on Advancing from the Ventral Striatum. Web site provides complete program, abstract submission and registration information.

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Positions

Faculty positions

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN NEUROETHOLOGY OF SOUND COMMUNICATION. Applications are invited for a position as associate professor at the Institute of Biology, Univ. of Odense. The position is a tenured faculty position, but for the first five years it will be financed by the Centre for Sound Communication of the Danish National Research Foundation. Research at the Centre includes physiological, biophysical, and behavioral aspects of hearing and sound emission in insects and vertebrates, biosonar, and adaptation of communication sounds to the biotopes. The research of the applicants should supplement on-going research at the organ and organismic levels, and not at the subcellular level. The Institute also includes research groups in Ecology, Ecotoxicology, and Ecophysiology. Information on research and staff at the Institute of Biology and the Centre can be found on the internet: www.ou.dk/Nat/Biology/... For information on application procedures contact Institute Chairman Frank Bo Jensen (phone: +45 6557 2756, email: fbj@biology.ou.dk) and Centre Chairman Axel Michelsen (phone: +45 6557 2466, email: a.michelsen@biology.ou.dk). The closing date is 31 July 1998.

Graduate and postgraduate opportunities

Postdoctoral Position in AUDITORY NEUROETHOLOGY. Two-year position is available for electrophysiological studies of acoustic signal decoding in frogs. These studies will be part of a continuing research effort by Ryan, Wilczynski, and Rand to investigate the evolution of signal decoding in the tugara frog and its close relatives. Address inquiries and/or send CV and addresses (e mail and snail mail) of three references to Dr. Michael Ryan at: mryan@mail.utexas.edu, or: Dept of Zoology, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712. [http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~ryanlab/]

Doctoral or Postdoctoral Position available at the BIOACOUSTICS LABORATORY at the Institute of Zoology, Univ. of Vienna, Austria. This project is funded by the Austrian Science Foundation and focuses on the correlation between vocalization and sound perception in fishes, and especially in otophysines and labyrinth fishes. A diploma, Ph.D., or equivalent degree is required. Applicants should have a background in bioacoustics and mechanosensory physiology, and experience with one or more of the following techniques: sound analysis, electrophysiology, or (ABR-) audiometry. Interested candidates should send a CV, brief statement of research experience and letters of references to Dr. F. Ladich, Inst. of Zoology, Althanstrasse 14, A-1090 Vienna, Austria. Fax: +431-31336-778. E-mail: Friedrich.Ladich@univie.ac.at

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATE. A postdoctoral position is open to study the physiology and anatomy of gustatory control of feeding in goldfish (see Finger, 1997; Acta Phys Scand 161, Suppl. 638). We utilize a variety of techniques, including immunohistochemistry, in vitro and in vivo electrophysiology, and HPLC, to study sensorimotor coupling and information transfer in the vagal nerve taste system. The starting date is flexible; stipend is at NIH scale according to experience. UCHSC is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Please send inquiries and applications to: Thomas Finger, Dept. C&S Biology, U. Colorado Medical Sch., Denver CO 80262. email: Tom.Finger@uchsc.edu

POSTDOCTORAL POSITION available immediately in the laboratory of Sarah W. Bottjer, Dept. of Biology, Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-2520, USA. We are interested in neural substrates of learned vocal behavior in songbirds. Our goal is to elucidate the mechanisms that regulate basic processes of neural development, the emergence of a learned behavior, and relationships between the two. Ongoing projects in the lab include: the contribution of neurogenesis to development of neural song-control circuits and song behavior; how growth factors influence neuronal survival and regulation of neuron number in the song system; factors regulating development of topographic organization and synaptic specificity; axonal growth and remodeling during the sensitive period for song learning; lesion and behavior analysis of specific circuits for song learning; intracellular/whole-cell recording in brain slices to examine changes in synaptic signaling during song development. Interested candidates should send a CV and the names of references to bottjer@usc.edu. www-rcf.usc.edu/~bottjer/

COMPARATIVE AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY OF HEARING TRAINING PROGRAM at the Univ. of Maryland, College Park, is seeking postdoctoral investigators to join our interdisciplinary training program. Trainees have the opportunity to develop a broad background in the hearing sciences, while participating in research that emphasizes a range of animal species and methodological approaches. The program seeks to produce scientists who have an appreciation for, and an understanding of, the diversity and evolution of hearing mechanisms. Emphasis is on research that crosses experimental approaches and animal species. Investigators include C. Carr (birds), R. Dooling (birds, turtles), S. Gordon-Salant, (humans), W. Hall (reptiles), C. F. Moss (bats), D. Poeppel (humans), A. N. Popper (fish, turtles), J. C. Presson (fish, birds), S. Shamma (ferrets), and D. Yager (insects, amphibians), For further information contact Dr. A. Popper, Dept. of Biology, Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742; (301) 405-1940; FAX: (301) 314-9358; email: AP17@umail.umd.edu; http: //www.life.umd.edu/cebh. AA/EO

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH POSITION: Insect Neurophysiology. A funded postdoctoral position is available, effective 1 July 1998. An initial 1-year appointment could be extended for 1-3 additional years, depending on performance and continuing availability of funding. The project will involve multiunit recording and analysis of spiking patterns from the brain of the moth Manduca sexta, in search of mechanisms of system-level processing of olfactory information. Preferred previous experience: intra- and extracellular recording and data analysis, such as auto- and cross-correlations, cluster analysis, spike-train analysis, population coding, and statistical methods. Applicants should send CV, list of publications, 3 letters of recommendation, and statement of past research accomplishments and future aspirations, to: Dr. Thomas A. Christensen, Division of Neurobiology, Univ. of Arizona, PO Box 210077, Tucson AZ 85721-0077, USA. Review of applications will begin on 7/15/98, but position will remain open until filled. For more information, contact Tom Christensen (tc@neurobio.arizona.edu). www.neurobio.arizona.edu/arldn/. The University of Arizona is an EEO/AA employer. M/W/D/V