Learning in Neural Circuits: Insights from Electric Fish

Abstract

I will discuss my laboratories ongoing efforts to understand the neural mechanisms for generating learned predictions of the sensory consequences of action. By taking advantage of unique features of a species of African weakly electric fish and combining electrophysiological, high-resolution anatomical (connectomic) and theoretical approaches, our studies have shed light on a number of general issues in neurobiology including: how copies of motor commands are transformed into predictions of sensory events, the functions of cerebellar granule cells, and how synaptic plasticity operating within specific neural circuitry performs a behaviorally relevant computation.