Datta Lab

Archives for December 2015

Happy Holidays 2015!

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This was a hell of a year, and so the Datta lab (minus a few early departures for much-deserved vacation – Tari and Ralph, you were missed!) did it up – a little izakaya action, followed by vodka gimlets at Eastern Standard with the Sabatini, Harwell and Stevens labs. This is a true story: there was a live cockroach on our pickled vegetables, and after swapping it out, WE ALL KEPT EATING! Says a lot! Happy holidays to all – here’s looking forward to a great 2016.

 

Everyone happy….except Bob, who wanted another cream puff….

 

 

This video is a metaphor, in which Paul is alcohol, and Masha is the entire rest of the lab

Interested in Mouse Behavior?…

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…then check out the latest paper from the lab in this week’s issue of Neuron! The paper describes a new technology for behavioral characterization and classification that combines 3D machine vision with recently developed approaches in unsupervised machine learning. This combined method can be used to objectively characterize mouse behavior in a wide variety of circumstances, and to identify changes in action induced after manipulations of the environment, the genome or neural activity; as such, this approach promises to provide fundamental insight into the complex relationships between the genome, neural activity and patterns of action. We are currently using this method in the lab in a wide array of experiments, ranging from characterizing naturalistic patterns of odor-driven behavior in rodents to trying to identify nodes within corticostriatal circuits responsible for behavioral sequencing. Congrats to Alex, Matt and others in the lab who contributed to the paper!

(PDF can be found under the “Publications” tab, and further discussion in the “Research” section).