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One of the great achievements in behavioral neuroscience has been the
elucidation of the neural mechanisms for the control of the jamming
avoidance response, a robust electrosensory behavior in
a genus of South American weakly electric fish, Eigenmannia.
Indeed, all of the
neural codes in the complete CNS circuit, from sensory receptors to
motor outputs, have been described for the control of this behavior.
This achievement has been possible, in part, as a result of two key
features of this system:
- First, a complete sensory algorithm for the
control of the jamming avoidance response - commonly known as the JAR
- has been described.
- Second, the JAR and many other electrosensory
behaviors do not involve muscle contractions: animals can be immobilized
by injection of curare for experiments and nonetheless exhibit normal
electrosensory behaviors.
As a result, intracellular recordings of
CNS neurons can be achieved during electrosensory behaviors in intact,
awake animals. My main research focus continues this tradition,
using the JAR behavior during intracellular recordings of CNS neurons as
a tool to understand the biophysical, synaptic, and network mechanisms
that contribute to the generation of behaviorally relevant neural codes.
The goal is to build on the the wealth of past results to achieve resolution
at the molecular level.
Other lines of research are being conducted both in the laboratory and
in the wild, and employ several species of gymnotiform fish and
other electroreceptive animals, including freely swimming elasmobranchs.
This research is unique in its multidisciplinary approach, yet it features
tight integration between behavioral, neurophysiological, and comparative
experiments.
Although this research is conducted in an esoteric sensory system,
the problems under study are ubiquitous in vertebrate animals. Management
of sensory space is
a problem common to all communication signals, and analysis of moving
sensory images occurs in many sensory modalities.
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