Electrophysiology

Circuit Mapping

The cerebral cortex evolved to guide behavior by extracting salient sensory signals. These remarkable functions are executed in cortical modules that share many features but also contain significant specializations. The function of these specializations has remained an open question, but modern tools to study circuits have begun to reveal their significance. Using circuit mapping techniques like Laser Scanning Photostimulation and channelrhodopsin assisted circuit mapping, we unravel the unique circuit motifs embedded in stereotyped modules that enable the Auditory Cortex to perform communicative functions.

Behavior

An animal’s brain must perform the challenging tasks of recognizing, categorizing, and assigning communicative importance to sounds. We use behavioral tasks to test the auditory perceptual abilities of rodents to gain mechanistic insight into their communicative functions. In the video clip below we show an example of a mouse performing a 2-alternative forced choice task to discriminate two tones.

Imaging

3D brain volume imaging using the tissue clearing technique iDISCO and Fos immunostaining

Brain activation in response to mouse vocalizations
Brain activation in response to frequency sweeps