Neurotech symposium explores how brain circuits drive behavior

The 2025 Cornell Neurotech Mong Family Foundation Symposium was held on Oct. 28 and featured two leading researchers in neuroscience to explore how neural circuitry in the brain directs complex behaviors.

The event was an example of Cornell's interdisciplinary commitment to advancing the frontiers of neurotechnology, hosted jointly by Chris Xu, director of the School of Applied and Engineering Physics and the Mong Family Foundation Director of Cornell Neurotech Engineering, and Nilay Yapici, associate professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior in the College of Arts and Sciences and director of Cornell Neurotech Arts and Sciences.

Now in its seventh edition, the Mong Symposium draws a diverse audience across the campus, including biologists, physicists, engineers, mathematicians and computational scientists.

Leading Princeton University neuroscientists Mala Murthy and H. Sebastian Seung, whose pioneering research encompasses experimental and computational approaches to understanding the brain, were the featured speakers.

Murthy, the Karol and Marnie Marcin '96 Professor of Neuroscience and director of the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, researches the neurophysiology and neural circuitry that generate behavior in Drosophila melanogaster, also known as the fruit fly. Her talk, "Circuit Mechanisms for Dynamic Social Interactions," presented research on how fruit flies use visual and neural circuits to guide social behaviors such as courtship, and she also described new discoveries about how stereopsis - depth perception from binocular vision - enables Drosophila males to estimate distance from females, essential for successful courtship.

Her lab has developed cutting-edge tools - including deep-learning-based pose estimation as well as the first whole-brain connectome for fruit flies that mapped 40,000 neurons and 50 million synapses - which are essential for understanding the circuit mechanisms that generate behavior.

"Mapping the complete neural connections of the brain through connectomics represents a transformative step toward understanding how neural circuits give rise to feelings, thoughts and decisions," Yapici said. "In this pursuit, the Drosophila connectome is far more than a map of a fly's brain, it is a Rosetta Stone for the fundamental principles of neural computation."

Seung, the Evnin Professor in Neuroscience and professor of computer science and neuroscience, presented "Insights into Vision from Interpreting a Neuronal Wiring Diagram," offering a glimpse into how connectomics can be used to better understand how the brain processes visual stimuli. Seung, a pioneer and established leader in connectomics, discussed the evolving importance of this field and its growing utility as a tool for understanding brain function. Seung noted that recent advances in small nervous systems, like that of Drosophila, demonstrate how connectomes can yield direct insight into behavior.

"Mala and Sebastian's research is a perfect example of the power of interdisciplinary collaboration," Xu said. "Physicists, engineers and biologists are working together to tackle one of the most profound mysteries: how the brain works. This spirit of collaboration is at the heart of Cornell Neurotech. Since its founding a decade ago through the generosity of Stephen Mong and the Mong Family Foundation, Cornell Neurotech's success has been driven by faculty partnerships across diverse disciplines, achieving impact that no individual could accomplish alone."

Murthy and Seung formed a grassroots initiative called the FlyWire Consortium, "a human-AI collaboration for reconstructing the full brain connectome of Drosophila" which was established through contributions from hundreds of scientists around the globe.

Yapici said that Sebastian and Mala, along with other researchers in the field, are tracing every synapse to reveal the logic by which brains, large and small, convert sensation into thought and action.

"The discoveries that begin in the fly will illuminate universal principles that govern nervous systems," said Yapici. "These are very exciting times for neuroscience, and we were delighted to host these pioneering researchers at Cornell for the Mong Neurotech Symposium."