Dr. Lisa Fenk

Primary research focus: Behavioral & Cognitive Neuroscience

Second research focus: Cellular & Systems Neuroscience

Keywords: Vision, Drosophila, Efference Copy, Eye Movements

Research methods: Electrophysiology, calcium imaging, behavioral genetics, anatomy

Brief research description: We recently discovered that fruit flies move their retinas, via tiny muscles, both seemingly spontaneously and in response to visual motion. These movements and our vertebrate eye movements are surprisingly similar. We aim to leverage this discovery, alongside the advanced genetic, physiological and behavioral methods in Drosophila to develop a detailed understanding of how a small brain differentiates between visual input that arises due to the animal’s own movements from input that arises due to events in the external world. And on the flip side – how do animals purposefully move their eyes to extract relevant visual features? Very broadly, this research program should allow us to better understand how brains form predictions and use those predictions to inform perception and behavior.

Current GSN students: 

Selected publications:

Fenk LM, Avritzer, SC, Weisman, JL, Nair, A, Randt LD, Mohren, TL, Siwanowicz, I., Maimon, G. 2022. Muscles that move the retina augment compound eye vision in Drosophila. Nature 612:116–122

Fenk LM, Kim, AJ, Maimon, G. 2021. Suppression of motion vision during course-changing, but not course-stabilizing, navigational turns. Curr. Biol. 31:4608–4619

Kim AJ, Fenk LM, Lyu C, Maimon G. 2017. Quantitative predictions orchestrate visual signaling in Drosophila. Cell 168: 280–294

Fenk LM, Poehlmann A, Straw AD. 2014. Asymmetric processing of visual motion for simultaneous object and background responses. Curr. Biol. 24:2913–2919

Fenk LM, Schmid A. 2010. The orientation-dependent visual spatial cut-off frequency in a spider. J. Exp. Biol. 213:3111–3117