Research Summary
Although the brain is compartmentalized in function, successful behavior requires that information be shared across distributed networks. We are interested both in understanding how information is represented across these distributed circuits during cognition and how these representations are altered in disease states. We use multi-site recordings in freely moving mice that model aspects of human disease to understand how activity is organized during behavior.
Biography
As an adult neurologist I see patients with neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's Disease, Frontotemporal Dementia, and Dementia with Lewy Bodies. I completed my MD and PhD at the University of Maryland where my work focused on using super-resolution microscopy techniques to understand how cytoskeletal proteins are organized at the synapse of living neurons. Following residency at UCSF I completed postdoctoral work focused on understanding how emergent properties of the prefrontal microcircuit are altered in a mice lacking Shank3, which model certain aspects of autism.
My laboratory at the University of Utah uses a variety of techniques (microendoscopes, photometry, multifiber endoscopy) to probe the function of distributed circuits during behavior, and to understand how structural changes observed in disease states alter how information may be represented acrtoss these circuits.