From the Neuroscience of Individual Variability to Climate Change.

Years of basic neuroscience on the modulation of the small circuits found in the crustacean stomatogastric ganglion (STG) have led us to study the effects of temperature on the motor patterns produced by the STG. While the impetus for this work was the study of individual variability in the parameters determining intrinsic and synaptic conductances, we are confronting substantial fluctuations in the stability of the networks to extreme temperature; these may correlate with changes in ocean temperature. Interestingly, when studied under control conditions, these wild-caught animals appear to be unchanged, but it is only when challenged by extreme temperatures that we reveal the consequences of warming oceans.