Our brains contain billions of neurons – cells which allow us to sense information from the world around us, process that information and engage in appropriate behavioral responses. But for those neurons to support those functions, they need to form the right connections, or synapses, with one another so that all the information in our brains is organized in a way that we can make sense of it. How do the neurons know which synapses to make?

We have recently learned that neurons don’t make this decision alone, but rely on glia – which make up the other half of the cells in our brain – to help them decide when and where synapses should go. In this talk, Dr. Taylor Jay will discuss her work using fruit flies to help us learn about how glia contribute to shaping synapse development, and also talk about the role of these same processes contribute to synaptic loss with age – the basis of age-related cognitive decline. She will also discuss her learnings and experiences at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting that took place last fall, made possible as an awardee of the annual BRAINet travel grant.

Taylor Jay, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral fellow in the Marc Freeman lab in the Vollum Institute at OHSU. She received her B.S. in Brain & Cognitive Science and in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She did her Ph.D. training at Case Western Reserve University, studying microglial function in Alzheimer’s disease and neurodevelopment.