Matt Wachowiak, PI
Department of Biology
We study how the nervous system encodes odor information, and how the brain processes this information.
In other words, how does the brain identify smells? This is a tough problem because most smells are complex mixtures of different odor molecules,
because the number of different smells that an animal must detect and identify is huge, and because the olfactory environment is highly varied
over time and space. Our focus is on understanding how patterns of neural activity encode odor information and how this code changes as a result
of neural processing. A major interest of the lab is in understanding olfaction as an active sense in which the detection, encoding and processing
of odor information is shaped by the animal's behavior at all levels of the nervous system. We use optical imaging as a primary tool to directly
visualize neural activity as an animal smells an odor, and also to investigate how neurons process olfactory information using reduced preparations.
We image activity in the earliest stages of the olfactory pathway - among olfactory receptor neurons, which detect odorants, and neurons in the
olfactory bulb, the first stage of olfactory processing in the brain.
Post-doc Position Available
Contact information:
The lab is located in the Life Science and Engineering Building Room 432. 24 Cummington St, Boston 02215 Massachusetts.
Phone: 617-358-0694.
The closest T stop is Blandford Steet Station on the Green B line.
Dr. Wachowiak's office is in Room 403. Phone: 617-358-3291.
