How do distributed neural circuits generate cognition and behavior?
Our lab addresses this question by recording whole-brain neural activity at single-neuron resolution in behaving juvenile zebrafish.
By combining large-scale neural imaging, virtual reality environments, and computational analysis, we investigate how brain-wide neural dynamics give rise to perception, decision-making, and learning.
Juvenile zebrafish provide a unique opportunity for this work. Similar to larval zebrafish, they retain a small and transparent brain that enables whole-brain optical imaging, while also exhibiting a richer repertoire of natural behaviors. Using custom-developed virtual reality environments, we study how neural circuits across the brain coordinate to generate complex behavior.
We investigate several core cognitive processes using these experimental platforms:
Social behaviors
How neural circuits encode social interaction and group dynamics.
Spatial navigation
How distributed neural activity supports navigation and spatial decision-making in virtual environments.
Reward & learning
How brain-wide circuits adapt during reinforcement learning.
Environmental Factors on Cognition
How exposure to nanoparticles (e.g. environmental plastics, nano medicine) affect these cognitive processes.
We are a systems neuroscience lab that combines whole-brain neural imaging and computational tools on behaving animal models to understand the neural mechanisms underlying cognition and behaviors. We hypothesize that cognition arises from brain-wide information integration; thus we work with zebrafish to gain access to whole-brain neurodynamics with single-cell resolution via cutting-edge microscopies.
We use data-driven approaches and develop computational models that link the brain and cognition – predict decisions and behaviors from neural activity. Our research features whole-brain neural recordings of behaving zebrafish and quantitative tools from machine learning and dynamical systems, with an array of genetic and optogenetic tools.
Among the entire brain, the cerebellum is recently recognized as a key sensory-motor integrator that coordinates various cognitive functions and behavioral outputs. Our 5 to 10-year goal is to interrogate underlying anatomical and functional connectivity, build data-driven quantitative models explaining the interplay between the cerebellar microcircuits, brain states, and behaviors, and verify causality via optogenetic perturbations.
Student-built research tools:
Previous research
How does the brain make a decision to turn vs. right? Here we used light-field microscopy (LFM) to monitor the whole brain neuronal activity, an operant conditioning task, and linear/nonlinear dimension reduction, and predict which direction the fish is going to move, and when to do so. At the single-trial level. 10 seconds in advance.
Videos from Lin 2020 Cell.
Funding & Support
XSeed UofT