Many largescale efforts are aimed at unraveling the cellular, molecular, and computational properties that underlie brain function. Yet, to date, many important insights into these problems have come from a humble part of the central nervous system – the retina.

In mice, the detection of motion begins in the retina, yet little is known about how the neural circuit that underlies this computation develops.

In this video, Larissa Heinrich explains her work in connectomics, reconstructing synapses from large electron microscopy volumes (in this case, the entire drosophila brain) using convolutional neural networks.

In this talk, Makoto Araki discusses how zebra finches can be used to study the neural basis of learning and communication.