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Mark E. Nelson Professor of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, Bioengineering, Beckman Institute, and Biophysics Ph.D. 1983, University of California, Berkeley Computational neuroscience; adaptive sensor/motor systems Mark E. Nelson 3351 Beckman, MC-251 405 N Mathews Urbana IL 61801 217-244-1371 m-nelson@uiuc.edu

Nervous systems allow animals to adapt and respond to complex, dynamically changing environments. The Nelson laboratory studies the initial steps of neural processing in which behaviorally relevant information is extracted from the incoming sensory data stream. The goal of our research is to understand general neural mechanisms and computational principles involved in this process. We use a combination of behavioral, neurophysiological, and computational neuroscience approaches to investigate information processing in the electrosensory system of weakly electric fish. These fish use millivolt-level electric fields to hunt and navigate at night in the tropical rivers of South America and Africa. Ongoing projects in the lab include recording electrosensory signals and backgrounds in free-swimming fish, analyzing neural activity in electrosensory processing areas of the brain, building computer models and simulations of neural information processing, and testing of biologically inspired algorithms using a mobile electrosensory array (a biorobotic electric fish).