Posters on molecular mediators of learning, dopamine and habit formation at #FENS2026

This year, our entire lab is attending the FENS 2026 meeting in Barcelona. Four of our students present their projects on three posters.

Graduate student Julia Schulz shows her work identifying additional molecular components of the motor learning pathway involving the aPKC and FoxP genes:

Master's student Daniel Döhringer shows his discovers of a small population of dopaminergic neurons in the fly brain that, when contingently activated via optogenetics, first appears to have an aversive effect on the fly, that wekanes over extended periods o operant control, towards weak appetetive effects at the very end:

Graduate students Ipek Subay and Friðrik Kjartansson present their first data on how a well-known structure in the fly brain, the mushroom-bodies are involved in regulating habit formation, a process that happens in the ventral nerve cord, far away from the mushroom bodies.