The vinegar fly, Drosophila Melanogaster, has a brain of about 100,000 neurons, 2/3 of which are involved in vision. Because they live fast and dangerous lives, flies are highly adapted to detect visual motion. I study how flies detect and perceive motion, and how the brain of the fly encodes an external environment that is in constant flux. I do this using a completely irrational mix of behavioral measurements, fly genetics, and electrophysiology. The goal is to understand how the brain converts the currency of the visual world, photons, into the currency of the brain, electrical potentials. Eventually we'd also like to know how these multifarious electrical signals are transformed into physical behaviors. The genetic tools available in the fly allow us to ask these questions with a level of cell-type specificity not achievable in larger, furrier animals. To check out a basic atlas of the fly brain, go to the FlyBrain, or for a more detailed map, try FlyCircuit.
You can read my Phd thesis here.