The Schafer lab is located at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge, England, and at the Department of Biology at the University of Leuven in Belgium.
We are researching the neural and molecular basis of nervous system function and animal behaviour. In particular, we want to understand how specific receptors, channels and signaling molecules act in the context of neural circuits to process information and generate behaviour. We hope to discover basic principles of neural circuit organisation and function that apply to both large and small brains.
We are particularly interested in understanding how networks of extrasynaptic, “wireless” communication in the brain are organised and how they interact with wired circuits to control behavioural states.
We use, and over the years helped develop, a wide range of approaches to study the nervous system, including classical genetics, electrophysiology, optogenetic imaging, and high-content behavioural phentoyping. We have also used theoretical approaches from network science to investigate the structure and topology of wired and wireless neural connectomes.
Most of our past work has used the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, an animal with a small, well-characterised nervous system that is highly accessible to genetic analysis and optical imaging. More recently, we have begun to apply insights and approaches learned from studying C. elegans to understand the brain of the cephalopod Octopus vulgaris, an intelligent animal with a complex, “alien” brain very different from our own.