In her early work, Dr. Butola studied cerebral stroke–induced changes in rat striatum at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India. Initiated into the field of neuroscience, Dr. Butola moved to Germany to earn her master’s degree and subsequently her PhD in neuroscience at the University of Göttingen. During her PhD studies, she worked in the laboratory of Tobias Moser, PhD, at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. There, she focused on deciphering the molecular physiology of synaptic transmission at high-speed central auditory synapses employing a combination of whole-cell patch-clamp, in vivo extracellular recordings from single neurons, immunohistochemistry, and electron microscopy. Dr. Butola then joined the laboratory of Jayeeta Basu, PhD, to build on her knowledge of a single synapse and extend it to study the functioning of circuit principles governing learning and memory. As a Leon Levy Neuroscience Fellow, Dr. Butola aims to expand our understanding of how memories influence perception of our current surroundings, by elucidating a novel stream of memory feedback to sensory processing.
