Dr. Cori Bargmann, recent winner of the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience and a pioneer in methods of looking at C. elegans to uncover how neural circuits operate, presented the idea that particular classes of genes — neuropeptides to be specific — are good places to look for the genetic origin of behavior. Because much of the genome is conserved across species and throughout time, new behaviors may be created by redeploying old genes in different ways.

Uncovering the basic building blocks of behavior, she believes, is an unsolved question in neuroscience that is now becoming solvable.