Our lab studies how the brain learns, controls, and perceives the syntax of flexible behavior.

We wish to understand how behaviors like speech and dance emerge from unreliable spiking neurons and plastic synapses. Activity in these neural components occurs in milliseconds – time scales that are dramatically different than the behavior they support. We investigate the neural mechanisms that bridge this gap in a uniquely advantageous model – canaries – virtuosos capable of innate acquisition and production of vocal sequences unfolding in time scales and syntax rules similar to human behavior.