Research Expertise and Interest

neurobiology, learning, neurophysiology, sensory biology

Research Description

Dan Feldman is the Coates Family Endowed Chair in Neuroscience and a Professor of Neurobiology.  How do neural circuits in the brain’s cerebral cortex mediate sensation, learning, and higher functions, and how does this break down in neurological disease? His lab seeks to answer these questions by studying the function of cerebral cortex at synaptic, circuit, and neural coding levels. They study how cortical circuits process sensory information, adapt to experience, and store information during learning. They investigate the cellular and circuit mechanisms for brain plasticity, and the homeostatic mechanisms that maintain proper cortical function across age and experience. They study the principles of information processing and neural coding, and how cognitive and sensory information interact in the cortex.  They also study the neural circuit mechanisms that drive altered sensory processing in severe forms of autism.