My research is focused on social hierarchy. Animals living in groups form complex social systems, in which individuals adopt their behavior based on their position in the hierarchy. Maintaining stable hierarchy helps to reduce aggressive behaviors and allows animals to shift their attention to other tasks, like foraging or threat detection. Therefore, it is crucial for animals to quickly recognize other’s position in social structure after a brief exposure to a conspecific or even their scent.

I am interested in how mice perceive social odors related to different positions in hierarchy and how they adapt their behavior after odor detection. Moreover, I want to compare how the perception of social odors differs from non-social ones, both on a neuronal and behavioral level. To address these problems I utilize electrophysiological recordings of different brain regions.