…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).