Social interactions require continually adjusting behavior in response to sensory feedback. For example, when having a conversation, sensory cues from our partner (e.g., sounds or facial expressions) affect our speech patterns in real time. Our speech signals, in turn, are the sensory cues that modify our partner’s actions. What are the underlying computations and neural mechanisms that govern these interactions? To address these questions, my lab focuses on the acoustic communication system of Drosophila.

Many biological phenomena arise from the scaling from individual interactions (e.g., between genes, proteins, metabolites, cells including neurons, organs, organisms, and species) to systems. Network approaches have transformed the study of such systems, given that the structure of networks is typically non-random and often strongly related to system-level functioning and response to perturbations. Still, many network structural features are associated with clear trade-offs.