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Faculty List
Gilles J. Laurent
laurentg@caltech.edu
D.V.M., 1985, Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire, Toulouse, France;
Ph.D., 1985, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France
Coding and Pattern Recognition in Neural Circuits
This lab studies neuronal mechanisms underlying coding, perception and behavior. We are presently focusing on olfactory coding: how are odors represented, learned, stored and recognized by the brain? We study these questions using insects (Drosophila, locusts, honey bees) and zebrafish, whose brains are both remarkably efficient and small. The general coding problems that interest us thus appear more tractable than they would be in larger systems, such as the mammalian brain; we believe, however, that many principles will be applicable to those more complex systems, because the general designs of olfactory circuits are remarkably similar across species as diverse as flies, fish, turtles and humans.
We use several techniques to monitor and manipulate activity in these brain circuits: intracellular, whole-cell patch-clamp, extracellulalar tetrode recordings in vivo; two-photon imaging. Having recently developed in vivo Drosophila brain electrophysiology (Wilson, Turner and Laurent, 2004), we can also now combine physiology with the tools of fly genetics.
We often use modeling approaches to reconstruct and explore the behavior and dynamics of olfactory circuits and test our understanding of function. Much of this work is done in collaborations with the groups of Terry Sejnowski (Salk Institute) and Henry Abarbanel and Misha Rabinovich (UCSD, Physics, Scripps).
Locust antennal lobe projection neurons (left) and mushroom body Kenyon cells (right) (courtesy of Sarah Farivar).
