Events / 2026 O’Leary Lecture: Julian P. Meeks, PhD (University of Rochester)

2026 O’Leary Lecture: Julian P. Meeks, PhD (University of Rochester)

12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m.
Neuroscience Research Building Auditorium, 4370 Duncan Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63110
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2026 O’Leary LectureJulian P. Meeks is a man with short brown hair and wearing a red shirt.

Talk TBA

Julian P. Meeks, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Neuroscience
Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics – Joint
Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Physiology – Joint
University of Rochester Medical Center

Each year, a former recipient of the James L. O’Leary Prize for Research in Neuroscience competition is invited to present the annual O’Leary Lecture and also be a guest judge at the prize competition.

The Chemosensation and Social Learning Laboratory seeks a better understanding about how mammalian chemosensory systems, including pheromone-sensing systems, guide animal social and reproductive behaviors. In most mammals, a major neural pathway that detects and processes social chemosensory information is called the accessory olfactory system (AOS). The AOS begins in a small chemosensory organ called the vomeronasal organ (VNO), which senses environmental chemicals, encodes information about these chemicals in the form of action potentials and sends this information into the first AOS neural circuit — the accessory olfactory bulb (AOB) — in the brain.

The lab is driven to understand the AOS, starting with the initial chemosignal-receptor interactions in the VNO, continuing into the computations produced by the AOB and finishing with observable changes in animal behavior. As an example of its specific research foci, the lab discovered natural mammalian chemosignals (including candidate pheromones) in feces, called bile acids, which convey information between animals related to species, sex, diet and gut microbiome. In the AOB, the lab has discovered inhibitory neural populations that participate in experience-dependent neuroplasticity, modifying the way that animals learn from each others’ during social interactions.

Through this work, including the many technical innovations we have implemented in pursuit our goals, the lab is continuing to advance the basic understanding of mammalian brain function and the links between sensory systems and social behavior.