Research

Our research is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the following labs and resesarch groups:

Nair Lab

Systems and Computational Neuroscience

The Nair lab projects involve reverse engineering the brain circuits in invertebrates and vertebrates, at intracellular, cellular and systems levels, in close association with neuroscientists and biologists. We model a neuron as a nonlinear electrical circuit and combine many neurons to form networks. Using biologically realistic and reduced order models, we use system theoretic concepts to investigate how such neurons/network circuits implement functions. We study neurocomputational and system level issues such as bifurcation, adaptation and learning (LTP/LTD, etc.), robustness, control and related ones for these nonlinear dynamic circuits.

At the invertebrate level, we are presently studying the following:

  • (i) how do neurons and networks maintain steady output in the presence of variability in both intrinsic and synaptic properties? and
  • (ii) how does information transmission take place in the social insect colony of umbonia?

At the vertebrate level, we are presently studying the following:

  • (i) how are conditioning and extinction fear memories acquired and stored in the amygdala and the associated cortical structures? How does context modulate fear and extinction?, and
  • (ii) what are the neuroplasticity mechanisms that can explain known cellular adaptations due to cocaine in the PFC-NAc glutamatergic pathway? What are possible mechanisms of LTP/LTD in the accumbal PSD, consistent with emerging experimental data?

In addition to providing a fundamental understanding of the underlying mechanisms, accurate modeling will also help lay the groundwork for innovative pharmacological, psychotherapeutic and other treatments by permitting rapid in-computer experimentation (drug discovery research, see Fig.1).

Illustration Figure 1

Fig. 1. Potential impact of systems and computational neuroscience research.