Joint appointments in the Departments of Entomology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and the Department of Anatomy Three distinct research programs are represented in my laboratory. The results are interpreted against the wider context of data obtained from neuro-anatomical, immunocytological, and quantifiable stereotyped behaviors elicited by defined visual stimuli.
Current studies focus on the optokinetic behaviors common to insects and human primates.
Current research also surveys across taxa of evolutionary conserved neurons so as to identify likely candidates underlying visual behaviors common to a wide range of insect groupsinhibitory pathways in the control of visually evoked head movements, using microablation and behavior, intracellular recordings, and immunocytology of GABAergic neurons. My laboratory is investigating the neural basis of visual place memory in cockroaches, using microablations and chronic recordings of freely moving animals Results suggest that specific areas of the mushroom bodies are involved in multimodal associative memory, and that when these areas are microlesioned this ability is abolished. Recordings of freely moving animals combined with neuronal marking - suggest that, as in mammalian motor neocortex, mushroom body neurons associated with a specific motor repertoire are activated in advance of that motor action. Present research uses intracellular recordings, dye injection, and confocal microscopy to analyze the structural organization of the mushroom bodies and their functional relationships with circuits controlling motor neuron activity. Insects are said to outweigh all other species of animals, and are acknowledged as the most successful of the land colonizers.