Detailed Biography:

Neural circuitry of crayfish escape behavior My laboratory utilizes the neural circuitry that mediates escape behavior in the crayfish as a model system for investigating factors that modulate the likelihood of behavioral actions. Some of the kinds of modulation that we have studied are habituation due to repetitive stimulation and modulation during competing activities such as feeding and fighting. The likelihood of escape can be changed both by intrinsic changes within mediational circuitry and by ongoing modulation of mediational circuitry by serotonergic and GABA-ergic systems. A readable current introduction to this system is, Edwards DH, Heitler WJ, and Krasne FB (1999) Fifty years of a command neuron: the neurobiology of escape behavior in the crayfish. TINS, 22, 153-161.