John Layne, Assistant Professor Ph.D, Duke University Behavioral Neurobiology
John Layne Department of Biological Sciences, ML006 University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0006		Telephone:(513) 556-9718 FAX: (513) 556-5299 Email: john.layne@uc.edu

I am interested in how animals perceive and interact with their environments. Specifically, I try to relate animals’ visual morphology and physiology to their behavior and the structure of their natural habitats. The goal is to understand the way natural stimuli are perceived, and to understand the evolutionary adaptation of sense organs with respect to the behaviors they mediate. This research follows the trail of information vertically through different levels of biological organization: from the spatial structure of light in an animal’s habitat, to the gross anatomy of its eyes, to the sensory cells’ physiological responses to light, to the higher-order cells’ filtering and computational properties. What binds all of these things together is the behavior of the animal itself. Such an extensive range of research questions requires many different and complimentary approaches. Techniques I employ include:

• measurement and analysis of natural visual scenes from the animals’ perspective
  
• quantitative analysis of natural behavior from high-speed video recordings
  
• morphological and optical measurements of the visual receptor array
  
• electrophysiological recordings from nerve cells in the peripheral visual system

Other related topics that I also have a strong interest in are animal spatial orientation, especially in the context of homing and navigation, and sensorimotor integration, especially in the context of the relationship between animal locomotion, visual feedback, and control.

See more about Animal Behavior at UC: http://bioweb.ad.uc.edu/faculty/buschbeck/behaviorposter/behaviorposter2.htm