Lessons on Family Relationships From Poison Frogs
- Speaker
-
Lauren O’Connell, Ph.D.Associate Professor, Biology, Stanford University
The 2025 lecture series in neuroscience and autism science is “Diverse Brains.” There is a remarkable variety and complexity of brains across the phylogenetic tree, from tardigrades to humans. In this series, scientists will delve into how differences in brain structure and function contribute to the diverse ways species perceive, interact with and experience the world. Discussions will center around observations that highlight the range and breadth of how neural activity of diverse brains enacts the arc from sensation to action.
2025 Lecture Series Themes
Biology: Mechanisms of Evolution
Mathematics and Computer Science: Discovering Mathematics Through Computers
Presidential Lectures are a series of free public colloquia spotlighting groundbreaking research across four themes: neuroscience and autism science, physics, biology, and mathematics and computer science. These curated, high-level scientific talks feature leading scientists and mathematicians and are designed to foster discussion and drive discovery within the New York City research community. We invite those interested in these topics to join us for this weekly lecture series.
In this Presidential Lecture, Lauren O’Connell will describe her group’s research on the neural basis of social bonds in family relationships, including parental coordination of offspring care and parent-infant affiliation. Her group uses poison frogs, which have complex family units and simple brains, to uncover the neural mechanisms reinforcing familial interactions. She will also present the latest data on how variation in care quality during development shapes brain structure and function in offspring.
About the Speaker
O’Connell is an associate professor at Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, during which time she studied the brain mechanism supporting social networks. She then established her own laboratory at Harvard University, where she worked to build poison frogs as a model system for studying the neural basis of family relationships. In 2017, she moved to Stanford to continue her research on understanding organismal responses to social and environmental stimuli using amphibians. She has received numerous honors, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.