Antonio Fernandez-Ruiz, Ph.D.

Research

My lab will explore how rodents learn the spatial layout and dynamics of a changing environment and how they exploit this knowledge to guide flexible foraging behavior. The ability to establish and maintain mental maps that can be used to locate food and shelter is an important skill. But animals in nature live in complex, ever-changing environments with variable food distribution and the presence of other conspecifics. The neuronal mechanisms that govern the integration of different types of information (spatial, social, food, and landmarks) into unified mental representations of the environment are poorly understood. I engineered methods for tracking the behavior of rodents as they forage in large complex environments. Combining this approach with custom-designed technology for monitoring and manipulating the activity of neurons across the brain, we will identify the neuronal circuits that allow rodents to maximize their ability to collect food—and assess how this circuit activity, and the animals’ behavior, changes in response to environmental changes. Understanding how these interactions are disrupted at both the neural and the behavioral levels in rodents could yield insights into the operation of cells and circuits in human health and neurodegenerative disorders—and potentially lead to new treatments for disorders associated with memory or social impairment.