Circuits for fast learning in navigation

In an era of impressive machine learning, it is easy to forget that some animals can learn from just a handful of examples using data centers no larger than a poppy seed. In this talk, Vivek will draw on behavioral, physiological, and connectomic studies in the fly to highlight how cell-type-specific circuit structure, together with localized plasticity, enables the rapid generation and updating of internal representations for adaptive navigation. He will also make the case that many of these circuit-level insights into neural dynamics and the building blocks of cognition are likely to extend to vertebrate brains as well.