Maria Dadalat

Title:

Associate Professor

PhD Granting Institution:

University of California, San Francisco

Contact:

Email Address: mdadarla@purdue.edu
Office Phone: 765-496-1921

Primary Training Group:

Integrative Neuroscience

Research Areas:

Humans make highly precise movements by combining information from various sensory modalities to plan and execute motor commands, a process called sensorimotor integration that must be learned through experience. We do so by forming internal models, dynamic neural maps between sensory information and motor commands. Despite evidence of the existence of such models, we have a limited understanding of how internal models form. The Dadarlat lab studies learning in the sensorimotor system by exposing adult animals to a novel sensorimotor pairing: using electrical stimulation to encode artificial sensory feedback during a behavioral task and state-of-the-art neural recording and mesoscopic 2-photon imaging to record changes in neural coding across sensory, parietal, and motor cortex during learning. In addition to systems neuroscience, the Dadarlat lab focuses on the development of artificial sensory feedback for neural prostheses, and approaches to enhance adult neuroplasticity to promote recovery from neural injury and disease.