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Dear fly community,
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<div class="">Please let me know if you would like to speak with Carolina when she visits UCL next week.</div>
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<div class="">Thanks,</div>
<div class="">Arantza</div>
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<div>Arantza Barrios, Associate Professor<br class="">
Year 2 Tutor Biomedical Sciences BSc<br class="">
University College London<br class="">
Dept. Cell and Developmental Biology<br class="">
Anatomy Building, 2nd Floor, Room 202d<br class="">
Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT<br class="">
<a href="mailto:a.barrios@ucl.ac.uk" class="">a.barrios@ucl.ac.uk</a><br class="">
https://www.barrioslab.org<br class="">
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<div class="">On 15 Sep 2026, at 16:43, Marc Amoyel <<a href="mailto:marc.amoyel@ucl.ac.uk" class="">marc.amoyel@ucl.ac.uk</a>> wrote:</div>
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<span style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">Dear all,</span></div>
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I thought this upcoming seminar in our department could be of interest to some of you:</div>
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<span style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></p>
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<span style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">Please join us a CDB Special Seminar by<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/biosciences/rezaval-carolina" originalsrc="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/biosciences/rezaval-carolina" target="_blank" id="OWAb0283ad9-1cc5-a0e4-42bc-3980ef9dd9dd" class="OWAAutoLink" title="Original URL: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/biosciences/rezaval-carolina. Click or tap if you trust this link." rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="0" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><b class="">Dr
Carolina Rezaval</b></a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>of the University of Birmingham.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></p>
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<span style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""><span id="cid:9287ffe6-786e-4e4d-a9b0-d6b659ae73fb"><image.png></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></p>
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<span style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;" class=""><b class=""><i class="">Decoding Competition in the Brain</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">Thursday, 1<sup class="">st</sup><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>October 1:00pm-2:00pm</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">Venue: G08 Sir David Davies LT, Roberts Building (<a href="https://www.accessable.co.uk/ucl/access-guides/roberts-building-sir-david-davies-lecture-theatre-g08" originalsrc="https://www.accessable.co.uk/ucl/access-guides/roberts-building-sir-david-davies-lecture-theatre-g08" target="_blank" id="OWA145ea1b4-c6bf-f828-e391-8cac22d1c28c" class="OWAAutoLink" title="Original URL: https://www.accessable.co.uk/ucl/access-guides/roberts-building-sir-david-davies-lecture-theatre-g08. Click or tap if you trust this link." rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="1" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">accessibility
guide</a>)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></p>
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<span style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">Competition is a key evolutionary force that drives organisms to exceptional performance in pursuit of critical goals such as food and mates. Yet it can also promote excessive risk-taking
and maladaptive choices. Despite its ubiquitous role in nature and human society, we still lack a mechanistic account of how the presence of rivals (‘competitive pressure’) is translated into changes in decision-making. Here, we harness the experimental power
of the fruit fly Drosophila to elucidate how neural networks balance risk and reward under competitive pressure. We show that males exposed to rivals persist in courting females despite visual threats. This risk-taking behaviour requires prior social experience,
implicating lasting changes in decision-making circuits. By combining our behavioural assay with neurogenetics, connectomics and a pioneering live imaging system to track neural activity in courting males under visual threats and rivals, we uncover a neural
mechanism that integrates competitive cues with experience-dependent signals to steer decisions during this sex–survival conflict. Our findings reveal how social pressure recalibrates motivation and biases high-stakes behavioural choice at cellular and circuit
levels.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">Host: Arantza Barrios and Marc Amoyel</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></p>
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<span style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">Best wishes,</span></div>
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Marc.</div>
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