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The Crook Lab studies how animals with diverse nervous systems receive, process and respond to noxious and non-noxious sensory information. We focus on broad questions relating to the evolution of brains, neural circuits and complex behaviors.

Our lab is both comparative, meaning we study common mechanisms of sensing - focusing on nociception and pain - in animals other than mammals, and integrative, meaning that we study nociception and pain at multiple levels of organization, from cellular neurobiology to ecological and evolutionary levels.

Our work includes ecological studies of predator/prey relationships, behavioral experiments aimed at identifying functions of injury-induced behaviors, and cellular neuroscience studies that reveal conserved mechanisms of neural plasticity in diverse species. Our comparative model system is the brain of cephalopod mollusks (octopus, cuttlefish and squid).

Our research on the evolution and function of pain has two primary research areas:

Cephalopod neuroscience and cephalopod welfare

The lab’s comparative research on nociception and the evolution of pain experience is divided into two main research streams. One stream focuses on the fundamental neurobiology of injury, where we use cephalopods to understand how tissue injury is translated by the nervous system into behavioral plasticity. The second stream of inquiry focuses on enhancing welfare of cephalopod mollusks in research laboratories, and informing regulations that govern standards of their care and use.