Comparative Midbrain Vision Project (Mouse SC and Tree Shrew)

This is my current project direction: understanding how the superior colliculus (SC) transforms visual motion signals into behavior under naturalistic conditions. Building on the retinocollicular framework in mice, I am especially interested in how object motion is represented when backgrounds are noisy or moving.

My current focus in mice SC includes:

• Tracking how retinal direction-selective inputs are transformed by SC excitatory and inhibitory circuits.
• Measuring neural coding of object-vs-background motion using naturalistic and reduced visual stimuli.
• Linking circuit computations (noise resilience and motion-contrast sensitivity) to behaviorally relevant motion readout.

At the same time, I am increasingly interested in tree shrew as a comparative model. The long-term goal is to test which motion-processing principles in SC are conserved across species and which are specialized, especially for ethologically relevant visual behaviors.