Michael Brecht
Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin,
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
Title
Brain representations of whiskers and genitals
Abstract
My lecture will center on the body-brain-relationship. In the first part
of the lecture I will talk about early vibrissal system. I will discuss
how novel X-ray based techniques allow elucidating the structure of
vibrissal mechanotransduction and how large-scale neural reconstructions
help us understand the mapping of afferent information onto the brain.
Wire-by-wire connectivity analysis will change our understanding of body
and brain. The second part of the lecture deals with sexual touch. I
will show that genital representation have an unusual degree of
plasticity and that genital touch affects puberty, brain and body.
Finally, I discuss unexpected male-female difference in human genital
representations.