Francisco Bezanilla, PhD

Lillian Eichelberger Cannon Professor

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

The main interest in the lab is the search for the dynamics of the molecular correlates of the function in membrane transport proteins.  This is being approached with physical techniques such as temperature effects and complex capacitance measurements in (…)

Robert Carrillo, PhD

Assistant Professor

Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology

DARN Program Director

The long term goals of the lab are to understand the molecules and developmental programs that regulate neuronal development and wiring. In a previous study, we investigated the biology of the novel interactions between two subfamilies of the immunoglobulin superfamily in Drosophila (…)

Ruth Anne Etock, PhD

Professor

Department of Neurobiology

The vestibular inner ear encodes head motion and position in signals initiated and shaped by mechanosensitive and voltage-gated ion channels of sensory receptor cells (hair cells), transmitted by extraordinary mechanisms to afferent neurons, and translated into spike trains by voltage-gated (…)

Elizabeth Heckscher, PhD

Assistant Professor

Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology

To study the molecular, cellular, & developmental basis of behavior, we use Drosophila larval sensorimotor system as a model system. In Drosophila larvae we can span multiple levels of analysis, from molecular and cellular biology to organismal behavior. We have two main interests: neural circuit development and the neural basis (…)

Matthew Kaufman, PhD

Assistant Professor

Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy

The question that drives our lab’s research is, how do neurons work together to generate the complex, coordinated, sequenced series of commands that drive behavior? To answer this question, we record or perturb large numbers of neurons in the brains of behaving animals, (…)

Sarah London, PhD

Assistant Professor

Department of Psychology

We use a combination of molecular biology and genomic techniques, in vivo molecular manipulations, and behavioral assays to draw interconnections between neurogenomic activation and behavior. The zebra finch is a powerful model for these studies because the majority of their brain development occurs after hatching (…)

Jason Maclean, PhD

Associate Professor

Department of Neurobiology

We are a group of multi-disciplinary scientists who employ computational and empirical approaches to the study of neocortex. Our research focuses on the mechanisms of neuronal circuit spiking dynamics and how these dynamics control behavior. We employ a blend of large-scale neuronal recordings, quantitative analysis, computational modeling, and machine learning. (…)

Daniel McGehee, PhD

Professor

Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care

The focus of research in the McGehee Lab is the functional role of neuronal nAChRs, under normal conditions and when exposed to applied nicotine. An interesting, but confounding problem in the field is that although nAChRs are expressed throughout the brain and spinal cord, there is very little direct evidence that they mediate synaptic transmission. That is, there are relatively (…)

John H.R. Maunsell, PhD

Albert D. Lasker Distinguished Service Professor

Department of Neurobiology

Our research is directed at understanding how the visual world is represented in the brain. We are particularly interested in what happens to neuronal signals in cerebral cortex when attention shifts — changing which sensory representations are important and which are irrelevant. Our long-term goal is to understand how brain mechanisms (…)

Stephanie Palmer, PhD

Associate Professor

Organismal Biology and Anatomy

I study how populations of neurons collectively encode information present in their inputs and how they perform computations on these signals. The brain performs several classes of computation including signal comparison, prediction, error correction, and learning. To investigate these phenomena, I work with experimentalists (…)

Clifton Warren Ragsdale, PhD

Professor

Department of Neurobiology

Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy

Brian Pendergast, PhD

Professor

Department of Psychology

Research in our laboratory is concerned with the mechanisms that underlie the temporal structure of physiology and behavior.  Nearly all behaviors are organized in time. Over the course of the day, the year, or the lifespan, thresholds for the activation of ingestive behavior, sex behavior, and social interactions (to name but a few), (…)

Jai Yu, PhD

Assistant Professor

Department of Psychology

How does the brain capture experiences, create memories and distill knowledge? These processes shape each individual’s life. We investigate the basis of these processes at the level of activity patterns in neural circuits. Specifically, we want to understand how coordinated activity of multiple brain regions across different time scales (…)

Xiaoxi Zhuang, PhD

Professor

Department of Neurobiology

We investigate the molecular machinery underlying synaptic plasticity and information processing in the brain. We are especially interested in synaptic mechanisms supporting reinforcement learning, economic decision making and motor control. Our main approaches include mouse genetics, fly genetics, optogenetics, animal (…)