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Our group is interested in the roles played by electrical activity in the development of the nervous system.

It is now widely accepted that most, if not all, developing neurons generate spontaneous action potentials early in their development. In many structures of the mammalian central nervous system, this activity is synchronized across large populations of related neurons. This spontaneous activity is necessary for many developmental processes, such as neural migration, the establishment of appropriate synaptic connections, and the development of mature electrical properties.

Our research focuses on how this widespread, synchronous electrical activity is generated, and how it carries out its developmental functions. At present, we work on the developing mouse neocortex, and use a combination of calcium imaging, patch clamp, and organotypic brain slice culture methods. We are particularly interested in how the populations of ion channels expressed by developing neurons at different stages regulated spontaneous activity, and in how disruptions of spontaneous activity cause abnormalities in later brain development.