Future Leader to Watch – Olayemi Joseph Olajide

ABSTRACTFuture Leader to Watch is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Biology Open, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Olayemi Joseph Olajide is first author on ‘Molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration in the entorhinal cortex that underlie its selective vulnerability during the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease’, published in BiO. He is a Research Fellow in the Center for Studies in Behavioral Neurobiology, Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, investigating the mechanisms of molecular neurodegeneration during the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease.

Why would someone want to present their thesis in three minutes?

The three-minute thesis (3MT) competition was founded in the Univeristy of Queensland in 2008, and has since spread globally. The goal of the event is for graduate students to present their research to a non-specialist audience with no props and only one non-animated slide. To top it all off, this presentation must be under three minutes! Why would someone want to do take on this challenge? Czarina Evangelista is a PhD student at Concordia Univeristy's Center for Studies in Behavioral Neurobiology, and she explains the motivation behind her participation and what she learned from the experience.

Neurobiology

Behavioral neurobiology aims at explaining behavior at the level of neurons and neuronal circuits, based on linking comparative anatomy, and the observation and manipulation of nervous system activity with animal behavior. The numerical simplicity and the presence of identified neurons in insect nervous systems make them outstanding model systems for neurobiology. The insect nervous system has a common ground plan with functionally specialized regions for sensory processing, integration, and motor control. In holometabolous species, the nervous system is restructured during metamorphosis to support new behavior. Different forms of plasticity allow for behavioral adaptations in the adult stage. Neuronal circuits for behavior in Drosophila melanogaster can be effectively analysed with genetic tools, as exemplified for courtship and mating behavior. Recent developments in connectomics and genome editing are expected to further behavioral neurobiology in a broad range of species and permit a comprehensive comparative approach to the neurobiology of behavioral ecology.