As a Neurobiologist I am interested in understanding the ways that nervous systems encode information and provide the substrate for perception, thought and action.
Our main emphasis is upon the BIOLOGICAL.
Whether we are trying to understand sensory processing, motor coordination or development, our approach is experimental and the insights we gain are in terms of adaptations in response to selective forces over evolutionary time frames.
Click on the links below to view summaries of a few select current and past projects. For details on these and others, feel free to browse through the publications
Mind Behind The Eyes
(the most current project)
My lab studies leeches for several reasons. One is that they are highly derived annelid worms and so provide us with a view of the way nervous systems evolved in bilateral creatures (like ourselves). Other reasons are practical, the leech provides an excellent and accessible model that is very amenable to study. The leech has several hundreds of individually identifiable neurons that can be examined in great detail and, while leech cells and circuits are similar to those in vertebrates, the CNS of primates contains close to 86 BILLION neurons! A much more difficult system to gain detailed insights into directly.
There are many resources available in these pages to help with understanding leeches and neurobiology.