Fairhall Lab

Research

We work with experimental collaborators across many species to ask how neural coding is shaped by behavioral demands and the complex statistics of the natural world.

Theory Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s ink drawing of neurons in the cerebral cortex

Single neurons

Adaptive computation in single neurons

What can single neurons compute, and how is this governed by the underlying biophysics?

With the Moody, Rieke and Spain labs
Insect A fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, seen from the side

Drosophila

Dopamine, movement and reward

How do the fly’s dopaminergic reinforcement pathways represent its own movement, and how does behavioral context shape those signals?

With the Ruta lab
Fish

Zebrafish

Attention and behavioral state

How does a larval zebrafish switch its attention, and what does that reveal about state-dependent processing?

With the Engert and Ahrens labs
Insect An Aedes aegypti mosquito feeding on human skin

Mosquitoes

Thermosensation while foraging

Heat and CO₂ plumes are intermittent and turbulent. How do foraging mosquitoes use these cues to locate a host?

With the Daniel, Riffell and Dickinson labs
Cnidarian

Hydra

From neural firing to behavior

The small, transparent Hydra lets us connect neural activity directly to behavior. How do neural inputs drive muscle activation and the biomechanics of the whole body?

With the Yuste, Daniel, Regnier and Bosma labs
Insect A Manduca sexta hawkmoth resting with wings spread

Hawkmoths & flies

From sensory input to motor output

How do sensory codes adapt to changing statistics, and how are they converted into motor commands?

With the Daniel and Dickinson labs
Songbird A male zebra finch perched on a branch

Zebra finch

Learning reliable motor output

How does the song system’s thalamocortical–basal ganglia circuitry modulate the variability needed for lifelong learning, and keep the network robust?

With the Perkel, Fee, Lois, Gardner, Gadagkar, Scott and Long labs
Mouse A white laboratory mouse resting in a hand

Mice

Learning and behavior in mice

How do mice exhibit flexible behaviors? How are behavioral states reflected in neural activity?

With the Svoboda, Olsen and Cohen labs
Primate

Primates

Foraging in virtual reality

How do we build internal models? How do we identify them in neural activity?

With the Buffalo lab
Across systemsAdaptive codingMultiple timescalesSingle neurons to networksSensory to motorLearning and variabilityPlasticity rules

Images: Drawing by Santiago Ramón y Cajal (public domain); Drosophila melanogaster by André Karwath (CC BY-SA 2.5); Zebrafish whole-brain imaging from Dunn et al. (2016), Ahrens lab, eLife (CC BY 4.0); Aedes aegypti by James Gathany, CDC (public domain); Hydra calcium imaging, Dupré & Yuste (2017); Manduca sexta by Katja Schulz (CC BY 2.0); Zebra finch by Janet’s Photos (CC BY 2.0); Lab mouse by Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff (CC BY-SA 3.0); Courtesy Sofia Landi, Buffalo lab. All collaborating labs →