Funded Awards

Many animals rely on their ability to navigate to the source of airborne odor plumes for survival. Studies dating back a century have shown that insects combine mechanosensory and olfactory cues to navigate, surging upwind when detecting odor but go crosswind or downwind when losing the signal.

Cortical assembly formation through excitatory/inhibitory circuit plasticity. Project Summary Throughout the brain, sensory information is thought to be represented by the joint activity of neurons that form functionally connected assemblies.

Project Summary Aggression is an evolutionarily conserved behavior that controls social hierarchies and protects valuable resources like mates, food, and territory. In most cases, aggression is a necessary, adaptive component of social behavior.

Project Summary Mother-infant bonding is a key relationship that lays a foundation for wellness throughout life. Social recognition is an important component of this relationship, as infants imprint on the smell of their mothers and use olfaction to distinguish their mother from others.

SUMMARY Acoustic technologies such as optoacoustic (OA) imaging and ultrasound neuromodulation (USNM) are poised to revolutionize deep tissue, high-resolution, large-scale, in vivo imaging, and neurostimulation in mammalian organisms.

PROJECT SUMMARY This project seeks to develop a multi-probe ultrathin endomicroscope to enable high-resolution imaging and photo-stimulation at multiple sites within currently inaccessible regions of the brain.

Project Summary The brain uses sensory representations to assess risk and predict reward in order to adjust behavior. Per­ ception is a multisensory process. To make reliable predictions, it is advantageous for the brain to combine more than one sensory modality to represent the world.

Summary Animals actively sample sensory information, which they combine with prior knowledge to make decisions in a sensorimotor feedback loop.

Project Summary Animals interact with the world through dynamic, iterative sensory-motor processes that guide their ongoing movement.

PROJECT SUMMARY In order to forage effectively for food, the brain must integrate innate and learned information about the value of different food odors and use this information to select navigational motor programs.

ABSTRACT Short-term memory is an essential component of cognition. Here, we will investigate an ethologically relevant form of short-term memory that guides navigation behavior: memory of odor concentration across sniffs.

PROJECT SUMMARY A key problem in neuroscience is understanding how internal and external information are integrated in the brain to produce sensory experiences, cognition, and behavioral responses.

SUMMARY / ABSTRACT – Project 1. Multi-feature, Multi-scale Atlas Project 1 of the Berghia Brain Project is to create a multi-scale, multi-feature atlas of the Berghia brain and peripheral neural plexus.

PROJECT SUMMARY Living organisms interact with complex environments that are inherently multisensory. Within these environments, the brain must integrate information from multiple sensory modalities, including the auditory and olfactory systems, for perception and behavior.

PROJECT SUMMARY Social insects show robust and complex behaviors, and have served as important study systems in ethology for decades.

PROJECT SUMMARY This project is a collaboration across two universities and multiple scientific disciplines to develop new scalable 3D molecular imaging and analysis approaches for cell type identification within human brain tissue.

The brain uses the combined physiology of many cells to transform incoming sensory signals into internal representations.

Our senses aren’t passive. Rather, we actively seek relevant information via sampling movements. However, experiments in sensory systems often restrict sampling movements to simplify stimulus delivery and allow large scale imaging and electrophysiology.

Project Summary Aggression is a fundamental social behavior. Though widespread, the stimuli that modulate aggression differ between species. Primates rely strongly on visual cues, while in rodents and insects olfactory stimuli are essential.

Project Summary Navigating within an odor plume is a complex task due to unpredictable changes in odor concentration.