Schleyer lab

This is the page of the Schleyer lab. We are an international research group at Hokkaido University, investigating learning & memory, decision-making and locomotion.

We try to understand the potentially biggest “Unknown” in our world – the brain. Our brain controls our behaviour and our body, yet despite great efforts we still have only a limited understanding of how it accomplishes its tasks. Our research therefore focusses on the much smaller and simpler brain of an invertebrate animal: the larva of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. With about 10,000 neurons and unparalleled tools to study the genetics and neuronal circuits on single-cell level, it is to date the best candidate study object to gain a comprehensive understanding how a brain works. Therefore, we investigate how larvae learn, remember and use the memory for making decisions.