Welcome to the Taylor Lab!
mission
Our lab investigates how brain circuits control decision-making, motivation, learning, memory, and habits—and how these processes differ across sexes and change in mental illness.
We focus on limbic and cortico-striatal circuits that underlie behaviors such as inhibitory control, reinforcement learning, and motivation. Using rodent models, we combine behavioral analysis with pharmacological, optogenetic, viral, molecular, imaging, and computational methods to link brain mechanisms to behavior.
Our research also focuses on how neurodevelopmental and plasticity processes relate to decision-making, learning, memory, and motivational processes that contribute to addiction, alcoholism, depression, stress and other psychiatric diseases. We are particularly interested in memory plasticity processes (destabilization and restabilization) that are involved in memory reconsolidation, which allows new information to be integrated into memory and cognition.
techniques
behavior
—Complex decision-making, learning, and motivation tasks
—Assessment of habit formation, inhibitory control, and reinforcement learning
systems
—Optogenetics and chemogenetics to selectively activate or inhibit neural circuits
—Pharmacological and molecular approaches to study neurotransmission and signaling pathways
—In vivo calcium imaging and neural recording, and Positron Emission Tomography imaging to visualize and quantify molecular and functional brain processes
computation
—Machine learning and neurocomputational modeling to understand learning and decision-making processes
—Advanced statistical and behavioral analyses to link brain activity to cognitive and motivational states
