Officers and Crew (Lab Members)

How does the brain control movement of the body?

In mammals, motor cortex is specialized for the planning, initiation, control, and learning of movements. But the computations performed by this circuit are not known. My research seeks to (a) identify the specific connections of defined cell types in motor cortex, (b) explain how these specific connections drive neuronal firing, and (c) characterize the connections that change strength during learning. Thus, our goal is a circuit diagram of the brain with a functional understanding of how the circuit processing information.

The tools needed to define cortical circuits are being rapidly developed: New transgenic mouse lines label specific sets of excitatory pyramidal neurons and inhibitory interneurons in mouse neocortex, giving us access to defined cell types. We use these to identify cell-type specific inputs and outputs in the motor cortex. Different cell types are believed to play distinct roles in the local circuit, so understanding their specific inputs will help explain the specific response properties of each cell type. New optical and genetic methods for circuit mapping make it possible to independently excite one or more neuron populations, thus quantifying the connectivity of local and long-range inputs to different cortical cell types.

Tae is a graduate student in the Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh (CNUP) program with a strong interest in development and plasticity.  She is mastering whole cell recording to study the development of inhibitory microcircuits.  She is also leading the lab's effort to implement a motor skill learning task (rotarod) and identify circuit changes during motor learning.

Quincy is undergraduate at Pitt (Class of 2021) with a neuroscience major and minors in chemistry and French language. He joined the Hooks lab as a freshman with plans to pursue a PhD and continue neuroscience research after graduation. He's still exploring different aspects of neuroscience but his current interests lie in motor movement in respect to the neuromuscular junction as well as neuropharmacology. He has developed an expertise in confocal microscopy and individual neuron reconstruction while in the lab.

Madhumita is a student in the Masters Program in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University (2018 - 2019). Her research interest is to understand the brain during different tasks and its response to different stimuli through computational approaches. I am particularly interested in analyzing and understanding the information flow in brain regions during these tasks.