Course: Sensory Biology and Behavior of Fishes

[sue_bertram]

Description: This five-week graduate course will focus on the comparative exploration of the sensory mechanisms that control behaviors necessary for survival and reproduction in fishes. Through a combination of intensive lectures and discussions, extensive hands-on laboratory training, one-on-one interactions with course faculty, lab exercises and student-led projects, students will investigate the sensory biology and behavior of fishes at the organismal, systems, and cellular levels using modern techniques that include behavioral recordings and analysis, electrophysiology, neuroanatomy, immunohistochemistry, and brain activation imaging techniques.  Laboratory exercises will include the behavioral analysis of fishes to biologically-relevant stimuli (electrosensory and lateral line stimuli), fish vocalization recordings and analysis, morphological analysis of sensory receptor systems and associated brain structures, brain dissection, sectioning and staining, auditory evoked potential-, electroretinogram and electro-olfactogram recordings, analysis of brain activation patterns and the functional mapping of neural activity during the expression of behavior via immunohistochemistry for products of immediate early gene expression.

Enrollment is limited to 15 students.

Instructors: Drs. Paul Forlano, Stephen Kajiura and Joseph Sisneros

Dates: June 15 to July 19

More information: http://depts.washington.edu/fhl/studentSummer2015.html