Our lab studies signal processing in the brain. We use the fruit fly as a model in which numerical simplicity, well-charted connectivity, and our ability to control nervous activity have aligned to make mechanistic ideas precise and testable.

Like our brains, the fly brain processes temporal signals over at least nine orders of magnitude ranging from action potentials that last only milliseconds up to circadian rhythms and beyond. While the biophysical mechanisms that act at both ends of this spectrum are well characterized, little is known about the processes that operate at intermediate time scales from hundreds of milliseconds up to minutes.

Our work is based on the premise that nervous systems across species employ a common repertoire of circuit architectures to delay, accumulate, and store signals over this time range. Bridging biophysics and behaviour, we describe these circuits in molecular detail and search for general principles of how they compute.