One of the major tasks that the nervous system faces is that of linking perception to action. We perceive the world around us through our senses and we use this information to select the most appropriate set of actions.
My lab studies the organization and function of neural circuits controlling movement in mice. Our aim is to define the neural circuits responsible for generating automatic and goal-oriented movements and delineate the underlying sensory-motor integration processes that link perception to action. We investigate four key aspects of the motor control problem:
- How, during development, are neuronal populations assembled into functional networks with the degree of specificity needed to coordinate movements?
- How do animals produce an accurate map of the surrounding world that can be used to direct movements?
- Which neuronal populations are involved in directing movements towards salient positions on this map?
- Which neuronal elements integrate incoming sensory inputs into the ongoing motor routine?
Answering these questions is essential if we are to understand how we produce purposeful movements and, importantly, why we fail to do so upon injury or disease. We investigate these questions by using and developing a variety of methodologies. These include mouse genetics, viral strategies for circuit tracing and functional manipulation, in vivo electrophysiology, optogenetics and behavioral analysis.
Selected Papers
- González-Rueda, A., Jensen, K., Noormandipour, M., de Malmazet, D., Wilson, J., Ciabatti, E., Jisoo, K., Williams, E., Poort, J., Hennequin, G., and Tripodi, M. (2024)
Kinetic features dictate sensorimotor alignment in the superior colliculus
Nature 631: 378–385 - de Malmazet, D and Tripodi, M. (2023)
Collicular circuits supporting the perceptual, motor and cognitive demands of ethological environments.
Current Opinion in Neurobiology 82: 102773 - Lee, H., Ciabatti, E., Williams, E., Nugent, F., Morgese, F. and Tripodi, M. (2023)
Combining long term circuit mapping and single cell transcriptomics with SiR-N2c.
Nature Methods 20: pages 580–589 - Ciabatti, E., González-Rueda, A., de Malmazet, D., Lee, H., Morgese, F., Tripodi, M. (2023)
Genomic stability of Self-inactivating Rabies.
Elife 12: e83459 - Jensen, K., Kao, T.-C., Tripodi, M., Hennequin, G. (2020)
Manifold GPLVMs for discovering non-Euclidean latent structure in neural data
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. 22580–22592. - Masullo, L., Tripodi, M. (2019)
Goal-Oriented Behaviour: The Ventral Tegmental Area in Motivated Movements
Current Biology 29: R922–R925 - Laura Masullo, Letizia Mariotti, Nicolas Alexandre, Paula Freire-Pritchett, Jerome Boulanger and Marco Tripodi. (2019)
Genetically defined functional modules for spatial orienting in the mouse superior colliculus.
Current Biology 29(17): 2892-2904. - Jonathan J. Wilson, Nicolas Alexandre, Caterina Trentin and Marco Tripodi. (2018)
Three-dimensional representation of motor space in the mouse superior colliculus.
Current Biology 28: 1-12. - Toke P. Krogager, Russell J. Ernst, Thomas S. Elliott, Laura Calo, Vaclav Beranek, Ernesto Ciabatti, Maria Grazia Spillantini, Marco Tripodi, Michael H. Hastings, Jason W. Chin. (2017)
Labelling and identifying cell-specific proteomes in the mouse brain.
Nature Biotechnology 36(2): 156-159. 10.1038/nbt.4056. - Ciabatti, E., González-Rueda, A., Mariotti, L., Morgese, F and Tripodi, M. (2017)
Life-long genetic and functional access to neural circuits using Self-inactivating Rabies virus.
Cell 170(2): 382-392. - Kohl, J., Ng, J., Cachero, S., Ciabatti, E., Dolan, M., Sutcliffe, B., Tozer, A., Ruehle, S., Krueger, D., Frechter, S., Branco, T., Tripodi, M. and Jefferis, G.S. (2014)
Ultrafast tissue staining with chemical tags.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 111: E3805–14. - Tripodi, M. and Arber, S. (2012)
Regulation of motor circuit assembly by spatial and temporal mechanisms.
Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 2012: 615-623. - Tripodi, M., Stepien, A. and Arber, S. (2011)
Motor antagonism exposed by spatial segregation and timing of neurogenesis.
Nature 479: 61-66. - Stepien, A., Tripodi, M. and Arber, S. (2010)
Monosynaptic Rabies Virus Reveals Premotor Network Organization and Synaptic Specificity of Cholinergic Partition Cells.
Neuron 68: 456-472.
Group Members
- Rory Bedford
- Daniel de Malmazet
- Lynn Geyer
- Chenxi He
- Fabio Morgese
- Stefan Rogers-Coltman
- Daniel Welch
- Yujiao Yu
- Yuanxin Zhang