How we process and respond to a stimulus or a context varies among individuals and across time and depends on internal state, prior experience and expectations. How are expectations formed, communicated and interpreted in the brain to modulate emotional and motivated behavior? How are expectations affected by internal state and how do they change with learning? The Fioravante laboratory investigates how foundational neural primitives including expectation, and violation of expectation, are implemented by mammalian microcircuits to support motivation and emotional and cognitive intelligence. We focus on the cerebellum, the brain’s “prediction machine”, the non-motor functions of which lack mechanistic understanding. By dissecting the operating principles of novel long-range cerebello-limbic circuits and their synaptic and molecular elements, we shed light on the functionality of these circuits and aspire to explain how their perturbations contribute to brain disorders. Our toolbox includes transgenic mice, optogenetics, ex vivo patch-clamp and in vivo large-scale electrophysiology, calcium imaging, single cell RNA sequencing and animal behavior assays. With these tools at hand, we aim to bridge the knowledge gap between synaptic, cellular and circuit levels of analysis. Our research has the potential to revise long-held views on how emotion- and reward-relevant operations are modulated in the mammalian brain and has implications for anxiety, PTSD, addiction and autism spectrum disorders.

Research in the Fioravante lab has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Whitehall Foundation, and the Behavioral Health Center of Excellence. Dr. Fioravante has received several awards including a NARSAD Young Investigator award, a Hellman Fellows award, a Brain Research Foundation Frank/Fay seed award for new investigators, the Outstanding Graduate Mentor in Neuroscience award by the UC Davis Neuroscience graduate students, and the Society for Neuroscience Next Generation award. 

Accepting students per funding availability.