Scholarship and Biography
A fundamental mystery of brain science is to understand how networks of neurons assemble during development and function in circuits to enable perception and behavior. Unraveling this mystery requires an understanding of the relationships between the cellular-level properties of circuits – the anatomical “wiring diagram” of connectivity on the one hand, and the functional properties of single neurons and synapses on the other – and the systems-level properties such as sensory responses or motor outputs. In the Neural Circuits Lab, we are applying a new generation of optical and optogenetic tools to observe both fine-scale circuit features and systems-level responses at the same time, in the living brain. We combine these optical approaches with advanced physiological and anatomical techniques to address previously inaccessible questions about neural circuitry and its development in mammalian visual cortex.
The age of big data is remarkably limited by our ability to read, search, and interpret data from a wide variety of sources. My lab has developed the Neuroscience Data Interface to make it easier to organize and share one's own data and to search and examine the data of others. We are continuing to develop NDI to break down barriers to discovery.