Principal Investigator Steven Flavell
Project Website http://flavell.mit.edu/
The Flavell Lab is dissecting cellular and circuit mechanisms that organize animal behaviors over seconds, minutes, and hours.
Action potentials and synaptic transmission occur over milliseconds, yet the brain generates behaviors that can last seconds to hours. How do neural circuits generate coherent behavioral outputs across a wide range of time scales? What are the neural mechanisms that allow circuits to generate long-lasting behavioral states? And how do physiological and sensory cues alter the outputs of the neural circuits that control these states?
In examining these questions, we utilize the nervous system of C. elegans, which is a simple, well-defined model system: it contains exactly 302 neurons, every neuron can be reproducibly identified in every animal, and a complete connectome has defined all of the synaptic contacts between these neurons. A variety of precise genetic tools also allows us to manipulate each neuron within this system. By combining these genetic tools with quantitative behavioral analyses, in vivo calcium imaging, and optogenetics, we map out neural circuits that generate behavioral states and aim to decipher the mechanisms that allow these circuits to generate long-lasting behavioral outputs.