Leo Scholl, Ph.D.

Leo Scholl is a postdoctoral fellow at the Orsborn lab. His current work focuses on improving the usability of brain-machine interface (BMI) devices. He conducts optogenetics and BMI experiments in monkeys to investigate how brain structure influences learning. Leo received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California, Irvine. During graduate school, he built state-of-the-art viral tools for optogenetics in rodents to study visual processing.

Principal Investigator: Amy Orsborn

Co-Mentor: Pavithra Rajeswaran

Fellow: Jesus Cabrales Quintanilla

Undergraduate Fellow Project:
Vision is critical to guide our movements. Just imagine reaching for your coffee mug with your eyes closed. Interestingly, we actively choose where to look. Eye movements allow us to actively sample visual information and contribute to reaching computations in well-learned behaviors. This project asks whether eye movements also contribute to motor learning. The research team explores this by asking non-human primates to learn novel motor brain-machine interfaces (BMI), and then analyze interactions between eye movements and BMI, both at the level of behavior and in the brain. As part of the team, the SURF fellow will assist with real-time BMI experiments and refine methods for eye-tracking. The fellow will also use machine learning methods to identify latent interactions between eye movements, measures of arousal (e.g., pupil size), and BMI cursor control. The project is ideal training for someone interested in experimental and computational approaches in systems neuroscience, and novel ways to study learning.