Home Department: Symbolic Systems
Mentor: Jennifer Raymond, Neurobiology

Neural computations involved in a number of processes, including sensation and cognition, rely on the dynamics of large, recurrently connected populations of neurons. Ella’s project aims to look at the oculomotor system—which involves signals encoding desired eye velocity as a way to produce new eye position signals—as a model for how these computations are adaptively modified by experience to “tune” and improve the performance of the systems involved. To do so, she will develop a new behavioral training protocol in mice to tune the oculomotor integrator, in order to investigate the relevant neural circuitry and better understand how this process happens.