Talk TBA

John Tuthill, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Neurobiology & Biophysics
University of Washington

The goal of the Tuthill Lab is to understand how the nervous system senses the body (proprioception) and uses propioceptive feedback signals to guide adaptive motor control. The neural control of behavior requires continuous feedback about the position and movement of the body. This feedback is provided by proprioceptive sensory neurons, which detect self-generated mechanical forces. However, despite the critical importance of this fundamental sense in all motile animals, including humans, very little is known about how proprioceptive feedback signals are used to guide motor output. To understand the neural computations that occur in sensorimotor circuits, the Tuthill Lab studies the compact nervous system of the genetic model organism, Drosophila melanogaster.