Overview
We study how animal behavior emerges from the complex interaction amongst the animal's nervous systems, their muscle-body dynamics and their environment.
We use fruitflies (Drosophila melanogaster) as our model organism because they perform many complex behaviors with a relatively simple brain, and because of the many genetic tools that are available in the flies.
We employ a multi-pronged approach which includes in vivo whole-cell patch clamp recordings, imaging, quantitative measurement of behavior, biomechanics, and computation.