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DEFOREST MELLON, JR. |
| Professor of Biology | |
| Email: dm6d@virginia.edu | |
| Office: (434) 982-5766 | |
| Lab: (434) 982-5766 | |
| Office: 286 Gilmer Hall | |
| EDUCATION | |
| B.S., Yale University, 1957 | |
| Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University, 1961 | |
| Postdoctoral, Stanford University, 1961-1963 | |
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| RESEARCH INTERESTS | ||||
All animals simultaneously process information from multiple kinds of sense organs (modalities) and combine much of it in the central nervous system in an operation referred to as multimodal processing. Multimodal processing underlies some of our own perceptions, e.g., the 'flavors' of foods, and is also critically important in executing movements that guide complex behaviors, e.g., playing a musical instrument. I am interested in how multimodal inputs are combined at the neuronal level within the brain. I use the freshwater crayfish as an animal |
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model to examine how hydrodynamic and chemosensory inputs are combined within the crayfish olfactory lobe, a brain region that processes much of the input from the antennule. Acute antennule-brain preparations are maintained physiologically while neuronal activity is monitored in response to multimodal stimuli. A recent interest of mine is in mechanisms that assure coincident arrival of action potentials at their central targets from widely dispersed sense organs. Analysis of acquired data is accomplished by generating intensity response functions, statistical analysis of spiking frequency, intracellular staining of central neurons with fluorescent probes, and the use of fluorescent antibodies to stain neuronal proteins. |
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| REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS | ||||
Mellon, DeF., Christison-Lagay, K. 2008. A mechanism for neuronal coincidence revealed in the crayfish antennule. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 105:14626-14631 |
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Mellon, DeF., Humphrey, J.A.C. 2007. Directional asymmetry in responses of local interneurons in the crayfish deutocerebrum to hydrodynamic stimulation of the lateral antennular flagellum. J. Exp. Biol. 210:2969-2978. |
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Mellon, DeF. 2005. Integration of hydrodynamic and odorant inputs by local interneurons of the crayfish deutocerebrum. J. Exp. Biol. 208:3711-3720. |
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© Copyright 2008-10
