István Taisz

Interests

A single sensory stimulus carries information about different aspects of its source. Nervous systems extract specific features of stimuli and use different processing architectures to represent them. The dorsal and ventral streams of the primate visual circuits provide an example of such a separation: these pathways process object identity and motion independently.

In my work, I use the numerically simpler brain of the vinegar fly to gain a mechanistic understanding of sensory feature separation. Using functional calcium imaging, connectomics, and behavioural tests, our work demonstrates that a fly pheromone carries identity (a male fly) and positional information (where the male is). These representations emerge in different neuronal cell types by pathway-specific processing steps.

Research Focus

Equipment

Calcium imaging

Connectomics