Marley Rossa

Marley Rossa is a Ph.D. student in Neurosciences at UC San Diego. Her thesis work in Ed Callaway’s lab at the Salk Institute focuses on characterizing the nature and organization of synaptic connections between neurons in the area of the brain underlying vision. These connections form the fundamental basis of information transmission in the brain and enable sensory information to be transformed into a coherent representation of the world around us. To investigate patterns in synaptic connectivity, Marley records electrical signals from individual cells in living brain tissue and can thereby determine whether or not those cells are part of the same circuit. By taking into account other anatomical and functional characteristics across many recorded cells, she hopes to gain a better picture of how these cellular connections are organized. Understanding guiding principles of neural circuit organization is essential for us to understand how the brain processes sensory information and allows us to make sense of the world.