Our broad goal is to understand how smell turns into behaviour in the fruit fly brain. We currently use a combination of genetic labelling and manipulation, targeted in vivo whole cell patch clamp recording and high-resolution computational neuroanatomy to study olfactory circuits.

We are particularly interested in how odour information is processed by the higher olfactory centres that mediate innate and learned behaviour.

One special interest is understanding how third order olfactory neurons of one of these higher centres, the lateral horn, integrate information from specific olfactory channels.

This process of selective integration is fundamental to perception and likely to underlie innate behavioural responses to general odours and sex pheromones.