We are interested in how the brain generates simple behaviours, and how it changes with experience to alter behaviour
We work with larval zebrafish, which are a very small and transparent model vertebrate. Despite being less than a week old, zebrafish exhibit sophisticated behaviours, which we are trying to understand using a combination of genetics and functional neuroscience approaches.
Our work focuses on three related questions:
1) The mechanisms of plasticity that lead to long-term memory.
We use paradigms to train larvae to ignore repeated stimuli. This simple form of learning is known as habituation, and offers a tractable paradigm to study the general phenomenon of learning and memory. Despite the apparent triviality of habituation (simply learning to ignore a given stimulus), how the brain actually accomplishes this selective filtration of specific stimuli is still largely unclear. Indeed, we have shown that habituation is a complex phenomenon that involves multiple independent plasticity events that each tune individual components of behaviour. We hope to gain insights into this process at the molecular, cellular and circuit levels.
2) Visual navigation
When presented with a choice, zebrafish larvae will swim towards lit environments and avoid darkness. We are interested in understanding the aspects of such stimuli that are attractive/repulsive to the larvae, how this manifests in brain activity patterns, and how this directs swimming behaviour resulting in directed navigation.
3) Zebrafish models of neurological disorders
As a vertebrate the genetics and neuroanatomy of zebrafish show many homologies to humans. Therefore, it may be possible to model human genetic disorders in zebrafish in order to study the basic biology of affected genetic/molecular pathways, and high-throughput approaches to identify novel therapeutics. We are currently focusing on Autosomal Recessive Cerebellar Ataxias, to determine if/how genes linked to these disorders in humans manifest in behavioural and cerebellar-dependent phenotypes in larval zebrafish, and what this might tell us about the biology underlying ataxia.