Prof. Ila R Fiete

The Fiete Group works on the mechanisms underlying memory, integration, error correction, and prediction in the brain, at the circuit level. We use theoretical and computational modeling techniques, and perform quantitative data analysis to tackle mechanistic and function-related questions. Recent efforts fall right at the nexus of dynamics, coding, and function, as we seek to find how each influences the others.

Ila Fiete builds theoretical models and tools that are elucidating computations performed by the brain as it interacts with the world. Her focus includes describing how plasticity and development shape networks to perform computation and how the brain represents and manipulates information. She works closely with collaborators to design experiments that allow analysis of how the brain solves complex tasks, such as spatial navigation. By combining theoretical insights with predictions and designs for experiment, Fiete aims to better understand how the brain constructs and uses memory for spatial and non-spatial reasoning, the mechanisms for error control in neural codes, and rules for synaptic plasticity that enable neural circuit organization. Through these avenues, she hopes to better understand the circuits underlying phenomena including short-term memory, integration, and inference, navigation, and reasoning in the brain.

A goal of systems neuroscience is to discover the circuit mechanisms underlying brain function, but neural recordings often provide an observational and sparse dataset. Fiete works with researchers to analyze neural data in light of theoretical models, incorporating predictions about the effects of perturbations to infer circuit mechanisms, for example in grid cells linked to spatial navigation.