Elizabeth J. Hong

“Synapses are a fundamental unit of computation in the brain and vary widely in their structural and functional properties. Each synapse is a biochemically complex machine, comprised of hundreds of different proteins that vary in both identity and quantity across synapses. The goal of my lab is to understand how molecular diversity at synapses gives rise to useful variation in synaptic physiology, and how this may reflect the specialization of synapses to perform specific useful computations in their respective circuits.” Research Areas: Synapse biology, neural circuits, the genetic basis of behavior, and comparative neuroscience