How does social experience affect the nervous system and behavior?

This is the fundamental question that we address at the Laboratory of Crustacean Neurobiology & Behavior (LCNB). Given increases in mental health disorders, especially those influenced by loneliness or other exclusionary social phenomena, and in physiological diseases like substance use disorders, this question has major importance for health and well-being.

The underlying mechanisms that link social experience, neurobiology, and behavior are relatively unknown!

The LCNB employs a crayfish model to better understand animal behavior and its control by the nervous system. Crayfish are social animals that forms stable dominance hierarchies, and their neurobiology is well mapped out. This makes crayfish the suitable model to study how social environments and experiences shape neurochemical and neurophysiological mechanisms and corresponding behavioral outputs in ecologically relevant contexts.

We apply a wide range of techniques and methods to address four interrelated topics: aggression and dominance, alcohol sensitivity, decision-making and behavioral choice, and the gut-brain axis. Our approaches include video analysis, motion tracking, extra- and intracellular electrophysiology, neuropharmacology, histology and immunohistochemistry, neuroimaging, and (more recently) proteomics. Please explore these below!