Dr. Sandeep Datta

Biography

Sandeep Datta is a professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on understanding how the brain enables animals to interact with their natural environments, integrating sensory information with movement to predict future events. The Datta lab addresses the challenge of revealing how the brain composes meaningful patterns of movement in unrestricted settings. They adopt an ethological perspective, studying spontaneous and self-generated behaviors of animals as they freely explore the world. The lab's core objective is to understand sensory-motor systems and their role in supporting cognition, particularly through the lens of olfactory processing, which is crucial for the laboratory's studies involving mice. By employing modern techniques including functional imaging and optogenetics, as well as machine learning methods for analyzing movements, the Datta lab aims to comprehend the complex interplay between internal drives and external cues that shape behavior throughout an animal's life.

Research Interests