Owen H Ko Chinese University of Hong Kong	GCNI Symposium "Windows on the Brain" Speaker Information

Short Bio:

Ho Ko holds Bachelor of Medical Sciences (BMedSc), and Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He pursued a PhD in neuroscience under the supervision of Thomas Mrsic-Flogel at University College London (UCL), where he worked closely with Sonja Hofer and Lee Cossell to reveal fundamental rules governing the connectivity between neurons with different functional roles in the brain. Based on his PhD works, he won a runner-up award of the 2014 Eppendorf & Science Prize for Neurobiology.

Ho Ko is currently an associate professor at the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, Faculty of Medicine, CUHK. He also serves the associate director of the Margaret K.L. Cheung Research Centre for Management of Parkinsonism and the Lau Tat-chuen Research Centre of Brain Degenerative Diseases in Chinese, and a principal investigator at the Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences (LiHS) and the Gerald Choa Neuroscience Institute (GCNI) of CUHK.

Talk Title: Chemosensory modulation of larval zebrafish eye-body coordination

Abstract:

Coordinated eye-body movements are essential for many animal behaviors, yet the influence of chemosensory inputs on these movements remains underexplored. Here, we enhance the Fish-On-Chips optofluidic platform to reveal that larval zebrafish use coupled saccade-tail flips for chemosensory avoidance, but not pursuit. Spontaneous saccades, which alternate in direction, are closely synchronized with tail flips via anticipatory adjustments in tail flip event rate, directionality, and kinematics. In response to ethologically representative chemosensory cues, this coordination is differentially modulated based on valence. Aversive chemical cues increase saccade frequency and the proportion of saccade-coupled tail flips, while also enhancing the turning intent as the coupling strengthens. Conversely, appetitive chemicals promote more sustained gliding movements without impacting saccades or their tail flip coupling. Brain-wide neuronal activity imaging reveals that the pallium, a cortical homolog in teleosts, strongly represents the sensorimotor transformation of aversive cue-associated coupled saccade-tail flips. Our findings underscore the critical role of chemosensory cues in regulating eye-body coordination in an early vertebrate species, highlighting a deep evolutionary integration of sensory inputs to optimize locomotion.