We are looking for new team members! Here is a taste of some of the projects one might work on:
- Cellular and molecular mechanisms of individuality and plasticity: we discovered that olfactory experience triggers the “disappearance” of certain neuron types in the nose. But how this disappearance happens is currently a mystery. A new technique in the lab, PhOTseq, will facilitate efforts to reveal the interactions between experience, neural activity, cellular identity, and sensory transduction.
- Mechanisms of navigation: olfaction has a “beeline” to the hippocampus, an area known for its role in spatial navigation. In unpublished work we have discovered a previously unanticipated “topographic” organization to the olfactory system. Can mice build an “olfactory image” of the world? How is this map computed and represented in higher circuits?
- We are developing new technologies for large-scale recordings deep in the brain and over huge regions of cortex. Optics, software development, and mathematics are all important tools being leveraged in this effort.
- We believe that the time has finally arrived to do for olfaction what the 3 cone photoreceptors did for color vision: provide an exhaustive understanding of the “features” recognized by complete olfactory systems. Recent hints suggest that there may be previously-unappreciated patterns that govern how a sensory system with hundreds of cell types organizes its coding capacity.