Faculty

Magnetic resonance imaging, gene expression, neuroanatomy

Neural mechanisms for planning, decision making, neural prosthetics, and brain repair

Genetic dissection of neural circuits controlling emotional behaviors

Spatial Genomics

Mitochondrial dynamics: Molecular mechanisms, physiological functions, and perturbations in disease.

Neurotechnologies to understand and repair nervous systems

Mechanisms of large non-coding RNA mediated regulation of gene expression and cell state

Synaptic and circuit mechanisms of olfaction.

Molecular mechanisms of neuroplasticity and neural repair

Molecular Structure and Function of Central Nervous System Synapses

Geobiology; geophysics; paleomagnetism; paleoclimatology; biophysics; animal navigation; neurobiology; astrobiology.

Neuroscience, Biophysics, and Pharmacology

Assembly of Brain Circuits and the Cellular Mechanisms of Behavior.

Developmental Biology and Genetics; Microbiology and Immunology; Evolutionary and Organismal Biology

My goal is to understand how large circuits of neurons work. By "circuit" I mean a brain structure with many neurons that has some anatomical and functional identity, and exchanges signals with other brain circuits. "Understanding" such a neural circuit will require answers to the following: What does the circuit do? Find the function that relates the inputs to the outputs of this part of the brain. How does it do that thing? Spell out the mechanism behind this computation in terms of signals flowing through neurons and synapses. Why does the circuit do that? Explain how the functions of this circuit fit into the larger brain and relate its role to the animal's behavior. For some time the lab's focus was on circuits for visual processing, in particular retina and superior colliculus. We have also worked on circuits for olfaction. I maintain an interest in these sensory areas, but our current research has turned toward problems that are comparatively less well understood: (1) Mechanisms of rapid learning: Animals can learn a complex sequence of actions after just one or a few successful episodes. (2) Task control: Many behaviors require a rapid switching between different tasks. How is that coordinated? In all these pursuits, we try to use the full toolkit of modern neuroscience: electrophysiology, optophysiology, molecular genetics, psychophysics, theory and modeling.

Understanding the neural and molecular basis of motivated behaviors toward homeostatic regulation.

Genetic, genomic and neurobiological basis of symbiotic interactions in animals.

Biochemistry, Structural, and Molecular Cell Biology; Developmental Biology and Genetics; Neuroscience.

Genetic and neural circuits that regulate sleep

Molecular and cellular engineering, non-invasive imaging and control of biological function, neuroscience, nanotechnology, synthetic biology.

Psychophysics

Network Mechanisms of Learning and Memory, Systems Neuroscience, Computational Neuroscience, Machine Learning, Bioengineering, Neurotechnology.

Systems biology of C. elegans development; Neural circuits underlying sex and sleep; Nematode functional genomics and chemical ecology; Text mining.

Neuronal basis of sensory processing and sensory-guided behavior; functional and anatomical circuit mapping.

Optical spectroscopy and microscopy, Biophysics, Bio-imaging, Chemical probe development.

Mapping interactions among all human cell surface proteins/Control of brain wiring by cell surface proteins in Drosophila