MIRIAM MATAMALES PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR Miriam obtained her PhD in Neuroscience from the University Pierre and Marie Curie (Paris) under the direction of Jean-Antoine Girault. She was awarded the EMBO Long-Term Fellowship to join the laboratory of Jürgen Götz at the University of Sydney and the University of Queensland where she studied age-related disorders of the basal ganglia circuitry. She then moved to the University of New South Wales where she established an independent line of research, for which she was awarded the 2020 Early Career Excellence Award from the Dean of Science (UNSW). Her research combines innovative high-throughput fluorescence microscopy and computational image analysis to understand how the functional architecture of the striatum encodes goal-directed learning and how its dysfunction impairs normal behaviour. ORCID | Google Scholar
CHELSEA GOULTON POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER Chelsea is a neurophysiologist who joined the team in January 2020. She has experience measuring activity in neuronal circuits using a range of techniques both in vitro and in vivo. Her current focus is the use of fibre photometry to examine activity in specific populations of striatal neurons during goal-directed learning.
CHRISTOPHER NOLAN COMPUTER SCIENTIST Chris is a computational neuroscientist who joined the lab at the end of 2020. He is expert in decoding tetrode signals in the brain of freely moving rodents and has a background in modelling neural network behaviours during reinforcement learning. His focus is on developing data analysis approaches to extract neural patterns in striatal neuromodulatory systems as well as applying deep learning of artificial neural networks to study behaviour.
LACHLAN FERGUSON POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER Lachlan was awarded his PhD in 2021 and is now continuing his work in the team as postdoctoral researcher. His work involves careful behavioural and circuit function investigation of mice’s ability to adapt and fine tune skilled actions.
JONATHON JACOBS PHD STUDENT Jonathon is a PhD student funded by the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship who joined the team in February 2022. His research focuses on utilising unique transgenic lines and high volume data analysis techniques to build spatiotemporal maps of kinase activities that reflect changes in action-outcome contingencies and predict future behavioural adaption.
MELISSA TRAN HONOURS STUDENT Melissa has completed a Bachelor of Advanced Science, majoring in Psychology and Molecular Cell Biology in 2021. She is currently investigating the functional properties of projection systems in the striatum during extinction learning and renewal of instrumental behaviour.
COLLABORATORS
UNIVERSITY OF NSW (AUS) Bernard Balleine
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (USA) Peter Balsam
UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE (AUS) Stuart Mazzone Alice McGovern
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY (USA) Sergi Regot (Regotlab.com)
GRANT FUNDING Our work is currently supported by the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Tourette Association of America and UNSW. Click for details
RESEARCH ETHICS & SAFETY All experimental procedures are approved by the Animal Care and Ethics Commitee and the Gene Technology Research Commitee at UNSW.
