PhD student in the research group 'Impact of neuronal variability on the reliability of encoding and the processing of visual motion information' headed by PD Dr. Anne-Kathrin Warzecha,  Department of Neurobiology, Bielefeld University. Funded by Volkswagen Stiftung.

Visiting student in the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Randolf Menzel at the Institute of Neurobiology, Free University of Berlin.

Biology and Psychology at Bielefeld University.

Dipterans - although being equipped with low-resolution eyes and relatively small brains with less than a million of neurons - are able to aerobatically avoid obstacles and successfully navigate through complex environments during high-speed flights. This ability requires the insect's nervous system to process visual information and code for spatiotemporal changes of (a) the animal itself or (b) objects in its environment, in order to efficiently control the motor system underlying flight behaviour.

The information processed in the visual pathway is thereby subject to sources of external noise (i. e. photon noise) and internal noise (i. e. stochastic properties of ion channels). The resulting variability of neuronal responses in representing sensory stimuli limits the reliability with which the animal can respond efficiently to visual stimuli in its environment.

I am interested in how noise at different stages of the visual pathway contributes to the overall reliability of information coding and what neural mechanisms have been evolutionary shaped to overcome decreases in reliability arising through noise. The methodological toolbox I use includes electrophysiological techniques as well as simulation approaches.