Memory Guided Navigation

Memory-guided navigation is a fundamental cognitive process relying on a mental representation of our current and estimated future location. The focus of my lab’s research is on investigating the neural mechanisms underlying memory-guided navigation, including the role of cholinergic modulation and sensory inputs in the formation of episodic memory. Towards that end, we use chronic implants of microwires to study the activity of multiple single neurons in freely behaving mice. We further use optogenetics to causally probe neural circuits, fiber photometry to image cholinergic activity, and mathematical and computational models to analyze our experimental data.