Associate Fellow
The John B. Pierce Laboratory

Associate Professor
of Neurobiology
Yale University School of Medicine

Laboratory:
Neurophysiology of Food-Seeking Behavior

E mail: laubach@jbpierce.org
Telephone: (203) 562-9901,
ext. 202

Education

AB, Lafayette College, 1989
MA, Bryn Mawr College, 1991
PhD, Wake Forest University, 1997

Biographical Sketch

Dr. Laubach has been at the John B. Pierce Laboratory since the summer of 2001. He obtained his PhD at Wake Forrest University in 1997, working with Dr. Donald Woodward's group on new methods for simultaneously recording from multiple electrode in the brain. He also worked on the neurophysiological basis of reaction-time performance and studied neuronal ensembles in the basal ganglia and frontal cortex. He continued that line of work as a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University from 1997-2001. There, he worked with Dr. Miguel Nicolelis' group in the Department of Neurobiology. At Duke, Dr. Laubach's research included studying the neuronal basis of motor learning, the role of distributed ensembles in tactile coding in the rodent and primate sensorimotor system, and the control of robotic devices with brain signals.

The long-term goal of the Laubach Lab is to understand the role of the frontal cortex and the basal ganglia in goal-directed behavior. Currently, three lines of research are being carried out on the neuronal basis of behavioral strategies that enable effective food-seeking behavior, or foraging. First, the lab is studying how we anticipate food-predictive stimuli and control our actions to optimize food collection. Second, the lab is studying how we learn the values of stimuli in the environment and flexibly track stimulus value under changing environmental circumstances. Third, the lab is studying how working memory is used to link together sequences of actions that lead to the collection of food.

The Laubach Laboratory is is supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health and is a core group in the Swartz Initiative for Theoretical and Systems Neuroscience at Yale.