Claude Desplan is invited by the Collège de France assembly, at the suggestion of Prof. Denis Duboule.
The genome controls the development of the body. Yet with only 25 000 genes, it's hard to imagine how the immense complexity of the human brain, with its 82 billion neurons and countless synapses, can be programmed into the genome. One solution is to reduce the problem through a succession of increasingly precise hierarchical decisions, but also to let the neurons make their final decision stochastically, a kind of controlled freedom. Using invertebrate systems, the lecture will analyze how the role played by these deterministic and stochastic decisions can build the complexity of a brain capable of controlling sophisticated social or solitary behaviors.
