Welcome to the Schottdorf Laboratory!
The brain is the last and grandest biological frontier, the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe. It is where perception, reasoning and planning happens. Our mission is to link the psychology of these mental capacities to cellular phenomena at a micro level. To do so, we use animal models.
Animals, too, are capable of amazing feats of perception, reasoning and planning. If you ever had mice in your kitchen, you will know what we are talking about. How do they do that? And how are these processes instantiated by the coordinated activity of single neurons?
We pursue this question with mice that learn to solve complex problems in virtual reality (VR). With the assistance of our furry colleges, we meld the sciences of animal behavior in VR, neurophysiology, computation, and artificial intelligence to explore the neural computations underlying perception.
We are recruiting graduate students. You should apply either through the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, or the UD Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Graduate Program. Feel free to also reach out to Manuel about possibilities.
Key publications
Abstract knowledge
Hippocampus can combine physical and abstract variables into the same cognitive map, instantiated as a neural manifold.
Early visual processing
Retinal responses to natural scenes are primarily driven by temporal variations though eye movements and gaze shifts.
Mammalian visual circuits
Visual cortical circuits were shaped by evolution, beginning in the earliest phases of mammalian ancestry.