How do the individual components of nervous systems
- neurons, muscles, and synapses -
give rise to the complex, adaptive behavior we see in animals?

All of the research in my lab asks this basic question. Getting an answer, though, demands a multidisciplinary approach, and so we use techniques that run the gamut from intracellular recording in isolated preparations and biomechanical analyses of body components, through neuro- and electromyograms in freely-behaving animals, and on to behavioral experiments and simulations of both simple circuits and complex behaviors. We have worked at multiple levels in a wide variety of systems: neurohormonal control of behavior in leeches, reflex plasticity in insects, orientation of animals to odor plumes, the central generation of rhythmic behaviors, neuromodulation of muscles in arthropods, mechanisms of legged locomotion, and robot simulations of behavior.

Most of our studies involve so-called "simpler" systems, in the belief that our best chance for a complete understanding of any particular behavior lies in starting simple. After all, the human brain has billions of neurons, while a crab has about one hundred thousand. Which do you think we'll figure out first...? A crab may not write symphonies or invent differential calculus, but it gets around in the world, finds food and mates, avoids predators, and generally solves the problem of existence. Behaviors like these are more than complicated enough to hold my attention for several careers.