The SOCIAL (Study of Circuits in Adolescent life) lab led by Dr. Verpeut studies the development of neural circuits and structure in early life to understand how behaviors are ultimately produced. The lab specifically focuses on long distance neural circuits from the cerebellar cortex involved in social and flexible behavior. This research is motivated by clinical findings describing an increased risk of autism diagnosis in children with a cerebellar injury at birth. We are interested in understanding sensitive periods of neural development and how circuits encode behavior. Using neural manipulation techniques the lab studies neural structure maturation, long-distance neural circuits, whole-brain activity, and machine learning to understand freely moving behavior.