Departments:
My laboratory studies how ion channels, hormones, and behavior interact in a vertebrate communication system. We pursue this goal in a unique and powerful model organism, weakly electric fish. These fish image their world and communicate by generating electric fields in the surrounding water and detecting minute distortions of their electric fields. The electric fields are generated by the discharge of a specialized electric organ, and each electric organ discharge (EOD) is produced by the simultaneous action potentials of specialized cells within the electric organ, known as electrocytes.
