Stephen J. Huston

Research

We study the fly brain to uncover the fundamental principles through which brains generate behavior.  To generate behavior the brain must transform its sensory inputs into appropriate motor outputs.  To determine how the brain achieves this, we study a behavior where it is feasible to understand the entire neural circuit from end-to-end: visually driven head movements of the fly. We use electrophysiology to record from visual, proprioceptive and motor neurons as they interact and also perturb the same neurons genetically to measure their impact on behavior.  For more information, see  https://hustonlab.zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu/.

  • Bates AS, Phelps JS, Kim M, et al. (2025) Distributed control circuits across a brain-and-cord connectome. Nature 656, 957–970 (2026).
  • Meissner GW, Vannan A, Jeter J, Close K, DePasquale GM, Dorman Z, Forster K, Beringer JA, Gibney T, Hausenfluck JH,  et al. (2025) A split-GAL4 driver line resource for Drosophila neuron types. elife 13:RP98405
  • Gorko B, Siwanowicz I, Close K, Christoforou C, Hibbard KL, Kabra M, Lee A, Park J-Y, Li SY, Chen AB,  et al. (2024) Motor neurons generate pose-targeted movements via proprioceptive sculpting. Nature 628:596–603
  • Kabra M, Lee A, Robie A, Egnor R, Huston S, Rodriguez IF, Edwards A, Branson K (2022) APT: animal part Tracker v0. 3.4. Zenodo
  • Longden KD, Wicklein M, Hardcastle BJ, Huston SJ, Krapp HG (2017b) Spike burst coding of translatory optic flow and depth from motion in the fly visual system. Current Biology 27:3225–3236
  • Huston SJ, Stopfer M, Cassenaer S, Aldworth ZN, Laurent G (2015) Neural encoding of odors during active sampling and in turbulent plumes. Neuron 88:403–418
  • Huston SJ, Jayaraman V (2011) Studying sensorimotor integration in insects. Current opinion in neurobiology 21:527–534
  • Huston SJ, Krapp HG (2009) Nonlinear integration of visual and haltere inputs in fly neck motor neurons. Journal of Neuroscience 29:13097–13105
  • Current Biology Dispatch: Frye M (2009) Neurobiology: Fly Gyro-Vision. Current Biology, 19, R1119-R1121
  • Huston SJ, Krapp HG (2008) Visuomotor transformation in the fly gaze stabilization system. PLoS biology 6:e173