Our goal is to understand how the brain generates complex and adaptive behaviour, which enables animals to cope and thrive in their habitats. We study this by analysing neural circuits and their functions in the rodent brain, as they learn and perform a variety of tasks.
We use the mouse’s sense of smell to understand how olfactory information is represented and used, and how this process is tuned dynamically to suit the animals’ needs flexibly.
Olfaction is a powerful model for probing sensory computation and decision-making. In rodents, it plays a central role in perception and behavior, offering a uniquely tractable window into how the brain transforms sensory input into meaningful actions.
Our research focuses on two main directions:
1. Circuit mechanisms of olfactory processing
We investigate how odor signals are represented and transformed at multiple stages of processing, especially in the olfactory bulb, the brain’s first processing stage for smell. Using physiological and computational approaches, we ask: how are odor features encoded, filtered, or conditioned, and what circuit mechanisms generate these neural codes?
2. Local and long-range interactions in context-dependent processing
We explore how behavioral context—such as reward, engagement, and task demands—dynamically modulates olfactory processing. By combining sophisticated behavioral paradigms with electrophysiology, optical imaging, and optogenetics, we dissect how feedback and neuromodulatory inputs flexibly tune circuit function.
Our work integrates quantitative behavior, large-scale physiology (including Neuropixels recordings, two-photon imaging, and patch-clamp), and precise circuit manipulations to reveal how sensory computations adapt to guide decisions.
We are aslo involved in various collaborations with scientists across disciplines. Examples include a project on the human evolution (how a modern human-specific amino acid change in the enzyme ADSL affects brain and behaviour), and development of devices like microLED array for optogenetics.
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If you are interested in joining our group, please e-mail and get in touch.
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