At Anan Moran Lab, we are focused on understanding how taste-related information, such as taste identity and palatability, are being coded in the brain's taste system, in what way this code changes with experience, and where it is stored. One simple example of such an experience-related change is when you get a severe malaise following consuming a novel dish. People, as well as animals, learn to avoid recently consumed food, a memory that may last for the entire lifespan of the subject. This, and other taste-related behaviors adapted to rodents, are being used in the lab to study the way large distributed ensembles of neurons are dynamically coding taste and decision information to drive adaptive behavior.    

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We use cutting-edge technologies:

 

• Neuropixels probes for recording hundreds of neurons

• Optogenetics and chemogenetic to control neuronal activity

• Machine learning  for analyzing our data

• Immunohistochemistry to identify specific brain regions.