Catherine Dulac, the Samuel W. Morris University Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, will give the annual Beckman-Brown Lecture on Interdisciplinary Science at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 10, in the Beckman Auditorium.
The lecture honors Arnold O. Beckman, the founder of the institute, and Theodore "Ted" Brown, the founding director. The series is funded by a gift from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation.
The day will be a celebration of Brown. Before the lecture at 1:15 p.m., the institute will host a ribbon cutting at Ted's Café on its first floor, which is named in Brown's honor. Brown will attend.
A reception will follow both the lecture and ribbon cutting at 3 p.m. in the Beckman Atrium. Please RSVP by Sept. 3.
Professor Dulac's talk abstract: Neurobiology of Sickness and Social Behavior
Social interactions are essential for animals to survive, reproduce, raise their young. Over the years, my lab has attempted to decipher the unique characteristics of social recognition: what are the unique cues that trigger distinct social behaviors, what is the nature and identity of social behavior circuits, how is the function of these circuits different in males and females and how are they modulated by the animal physiological status? In this lecture, I will describe our recent progress in understanding how specific brain circuits and cell types direct adaptive changes in behavior during sickness episodes in mice. Finally, I will describe our recent work uncovering how different parts of the brain as well as discrete, molecularly defined neuronal populations participate in the positive and negative control of the drive for social interactions when animals are isolated or part of a group, providing a new framework to understand the regulation of social behaviors in health and disease.