My main research topics focus around the general organization of behavior with regards to reward, punishment and decision making: How do brains accomplish adaptive behavioral choice? All animals possess a repertoire of inborn behaviors and continuously modify and adjust them to meet the requirements of the environment by learning. To study these processes, I use operant (instrumental) conditioning paradigms and contrast them with classical (Pavlovian) conditioning situations in flies (Drosophila) and snails (Aplysia). Such comparisons highlight the differences and similarities between behavioral and environmental learning, the two forms of predictive learning.
After now 10 years of resea...