Skip to main content

Let`s Congratulate Sally Horne- Badovinac on becoming President of the North American Drosophila Board of Directors (aka "the Fly Board") & Jean Greenberg on becoming the President-elect of the International Society for Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions.

People

Elizabeth S. Heckscher, PhD

My lab studies the assembly, function, and evolution of circuits. Specifically, we focus on sensorimotor circuits, such as those in the spinal cord. These circuits process a variety of stimuli such as heat, light touch, pain, and self-movement. These circuits generate patterned muscle contractions underly animal movement.



Movement control- My lab is interested in understanding how neural circuits implement the motor programs that allow animals to move. Our goal is to understand the functional architecture of a sensorimotor system at the cellular level.



Circuit assembly- We are interested in understanding how circuits self-assemble starting from a small number of stem cells. This should generate developmental insight relevant to stem cell reprogramming that could be used to replace diseased/damaged neural tissue.



Evolution of circuits- We are interested in how sensorimotor circuits change over evolutionary time scales to allow animals to control different body forms and behaviors.