Our lab is interested in how the brain we are born with meets the world we grow into. We study the interplay between innate and learned aspects of behavior, asking how experience reshapes neural circuits that support core behaviors such as categorizing stimuli, caring for offspring, and choosing mates. We use the auditory and olfactory systems as our main windows into the brain, because they are tightly linked to ethologically meaningful behaviors – from recognizing a pup’s call to discriminating a predator odor or a potential partner.
A central theme in the lab is development, with a particular focus on adolescence as a transitional period where brain and behavior are not always in sync. We ask how sound and odor categories are formed and refined across development, how parental experience sculpts auditory and olfactory representations, and how social and sexual cues are integrated by cortical circuits. Across these projects, we are especially interested in how “hard-wired” predispositions (for example, to respond to pups, conspecifics or threats) interact with learning to produce flexible, context-dependent behavior.
To address these questions, we combine systems neuroscience and behavior: multi-neuron recordings and imaging in defined circuits, targeted circuit manipulations, and carefully designed behavioral paradigms that probe discrimination, category learning and natural behaviors such as parenting. By following neural activity and behavior over time, we aim to understand how circuits change as animals learn, grow up, and transition between life stages – and how these changes allow the same brain to support both stable instincts and lifelong learning.
