Dissecting the structure and function of vertebrate sensorimotor neural circuits using larval zebrafish

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Essential to our daily lives is the ability to use sensory information to plan and produce goal-directed movements. Such behaviours include basic tasks like reaching for an object or walking up a flight of stairs. Despite the relative simplicity of these behaviours, there is an astounding amount of complexity in the so-called “sensorimotor neural circuits” that control them. Determining the structure and function of these circuits that underlie sensation and movement is essential to understanding how the brain produces behaviour. Some of the challenges faced by neuroscientists in unraveling circuit function are the sheer number of neurons in the mammalian brain and their incredible diversity. Additionally, the scale and opacity of the brain hinders our ability to thoroughly record neuronal activity during behaviour. Recent technological advances in molecular biology, microscopy and computing have made it possible to begin to overcome some of these experimental hurdles. These advances present researchers with an unprecedented opportunity to make fundamental discoveries about how neural circuits operate.***My laboratory will take an integrated and multidisciplinary approach to understand how sensorimotor circuits function using the larval zebrafish as a model. The larval zebrafish has emerged as an extremely powerful system to study neural circuits due to its unparalleled combination of experimental approaches, notably the exclusive ability to comprehensively monitor and manipulate activity throughout the brain. We will utilize these approaches to determine how circuits in the fish use visual information to control two goal-directed behaviours, prey capture and predator avoidance. Specifically, we will focus on uncovering whether sensorimotor circuits in the fish have dedicated roles in a particular behaviour or are used more generally across different behaviours. We will ask this question in three brain structures that are highly conserved across vertebrates and represent circuitry involved in sensory processing, movement selection and movement production. Knowledge gained from this research will have a significant impact on how we understand the neural processing in the brain that underlies vertebrate behaviour. Discoveries in sensorimotor circuit function will also have implications for the development of new brain-machine interfaces that will allow for the effortless control of prosthetic limbs simply by thinking about movements. Lastly, this research program has the potential to provide insights that will guide the development of powerful in silico technologies rooted in evolution's solutions to sensory processing and movement production.**