Our Research
Integrative Biology of Cognition
We are interested in uncovering new biology underlying “adaptive cognitive processes”, as in adaptive, species-typical cognitive processes of wild animals in their natural habitat. While society has been exposed to amazing animal behavior, neuroscience has vastly concentrated on a few inbred animal models studied in unnatural settings. The direction proposed by our lab includes using cutting edge quantitative approaches to understand brain and behavior. We base our research program on the Integrative Biology of Adaptive Cognition in rodents, i.e., how the rodent brain evolved to control complex and flexible behaviors in the wild. We hope to achieve this goal through interdisciplinarity in the lab and through key collaborations at UPenn and beyond.
Play Behavior
Play behavior is present in all cultures, and is critical for the social and cognitive development in human and non-human animals. However, it is one of the most understudied behaviors in neurobiology. Advances in the study of play have mostly remained in the shadows and have been technologically limited. We propose that understanding play behavior, its neural control and its evolution is central to understanding learning, sociality, and intelligence. Our research program will investigate whether, and by which neural mechanisms, does play early in life enable the development of world models critical for adaptive cognition in adulthood. My lab will strive to answer the following questions: Why do animals play? Does playing make animals smarter? How does the brain drive and control play?
Wild Behavior
We study the neural basis of behavioral flexibility in a south American large rodent, the Agouti. The Agouti is a diurnal South American rodent of the Dasyprocta genus (13 species) in the Dasyproctidae family, famously known for being the best scatter-hoarding mammal in the rainforest and critical contributor to carbon storage. Scatter-hoarding is the complex behavior of hiding seeds in independent small caches in the soil in order to save food for the future. Establishing agoutis as a model will create a groundbreaking rodent model for wild and social cognition. The agouti can complement non-human primates as models of complex cognitive abilities like planning, strategic decision making and theory of mind.
LAB, FIELD aND COMPUTATIONAL WORK
Lab Work
Computation
Field Work
Our lab will leverage several techniques to study natural behavior and cognitive flexibility in the lab. This includes electrophysiology (neuropixels and sillicone probes), fiber photometry using neurotransmitter sensors, wireless physiology. In our wet lab we will use taditional histology, inmunohistochemistry, multiplex in situ hybridization, sequencing and genomics.
Field Work
Computation
Field Work
We expect to conduct field work both in the US to study the behavior of Peromyscus mice and outside the use to use the best biologging technology to densely sample Agouti behavior in the wild. We will combine ecology with neuroscience and genomics but we are open to lab members pursuing the ecology of Agouti full time.
Computation
Computation
Computation
Our work will generate complex and large datasets that will require using the latest analysis tools to make sense of how the brain orchestrates behavior. Our work focuses on unsupervise state space models as an approach to the statistics of neural activity. (Figure by Lucas Durmargne)