RESEARCH BRIEF
How do we estimate uncertainty? How do we deliberate? How do emotions influence deliberation? In short, how do we think and what functional roles do cell types and circuits have in thinking and natural intelligence?
Here we are committed to providing answers to these fundamental questions.
The Stauffer Lab is dedicated to the study of decision making. However, choices are simply behavioral endpoints, and we are much more interested in the journeys themselves. The research conducted in this lab focuses on circuits driving this journey both in the form of behavior/neurophysiology techniques and molecular/cell-types. The neural mechanisms of thinking are implemented by highly complex networks. Therefore, the lab explores behavioral and neurophysiology techniques by recording from electrodes in awake, behaving non-human primates while they are performing complex behavioral tasks. We investigate how changes in neuronal activity correlate with the subjects performance. The highly complex networks are comprised of cell type specific neural circuits. Therefore, we also study the molecular properties of primate neurons and devise cell type specific targeting strategies for studying circuits during behavior.