I investigate social and affective memory construction by hippocampal circuits at the level of identified cell-types and populations, combining large-scale in vivo calcium imaging and single-unit electrophysiology, deep behavioral phenotyping, and causal circuit mapping.

My previous research uncovered distinct microcircuits and long-range inputs that shape ventral CA1 spatial codes for contexts predicting reward or safety from threats. These findings motivated my current investigation of social context-guided behaviors. Specifically, I examine whether social dominance hierarchies are facilitated by dorsal CA2 neural population coding of social variables such as identity and rank.

Going forward, my independent research program will integrate these approaches to study the neural mechanisms that bind and index social and emotional experiences into memory structures that support flexible retrieval, generalization, and inference.