Mark Howe

My laboratory seeks to identify neural circuit principles responsible for adaptively motivating, selecting, and learning actions in changing environments. We focus on the basal ganglia, a set of brain regions implicated in regulating motor and cognitive functions on multiple timescales. A range of techniques are employed including two-photon microscopy, fiber photometry, and electrophysiology in behaving mice as they perform tasks in virtual environments. These approaches enable us to investigate neural computations at multiple spatial scales, from large scale networks to subcellular compartments of single neurons. Basic principles derived from these studies can be applied to better understand neural disorders of the basal ganglia such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s Disease.