Rachel Wilson, Ph.D.

Circuit Basis of Sensory Processing

How are expectations and predictions wired into our brains? How are they integrated and updated as we experience new sensory stimuli? How are all these sources of information used to select and control specific behavioral actions?

The mission of the Wilson lab is to understand key computations that occur in sensory processing and sensorimotor integration, and to describe the biophysical mechanisms underlying these computations.

We use the brain of the fruit fly Drosophila to investigate these questions. The genetic toolbox of this organism allows us to rapidly generate new reagents to label or manipulate specific classes of neurons in the brain. Many individual neurons are uniquely identifiable across different brains, and they have fairly stereotyped synaptic inputs and outputs. This allows us to build up a cumulative picture of each neuron in a network. Crucially, it allows us to understand a neuron’s activity patterns in light of its synaptic connectivity patterns.

Because many neural systems in various species face the same constraints, we believe that some of the lessons we learn from this simple brain will provide clues to understanding similar problems in more complex brains.

In the area of sensory processing, we are currently focusing on the olfactory, auditory, and mechanosensory systems, as well as cross-modal sensory integration. In the area of sensorimotor integration, we are currently focusing on motor behaviors involving guided limb control.