I am very excited to be part of the "Asia Pacific Drosophila Neurobiology Conference" #APDNC in Shenzhen, China🪰and honoured to be able to present the recent work from our lab🙃

To accompany my textbook (Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience) and the class I taught this semester, I'm open-sourcing my lectures slides:
gershmanlab.com/lectures.html
I'll continue to update these as I improve them.

ERC President explains stricter application measures amid rising demand for funding The text of an open letter sent by ERC President Maria Leptin to ERC panel members, grantees and other stakeholders on 16 April 2026.

The number of grant applications is rising sharply. Our capacity for their evaluation isn’t.

ERC President Maria Leptin explains why stricter resubmission limits are being introduced for 2027 calls and what they mean for applicants.

🔗 link.europa.eu/xF7kjc

PLS RT📣

Two Postdoc jobs at #mpaib with Serena Ding on collective behavior of worms

(Never seen a "wormuration"? That's them in green)

🪱 social dynamics of collective dispersal: bewerbermanagement.net/jobposting/2...

🪱 sensory ecology of worm towers: bewerbermanagement.net/jobposting/7...

New @currentbiology.bsky.social paper from Dr. Leila Elabbady on neural circuits that transform a touch stimulus into spatially targeted grooming.

Leila discovered a leg somatotopic map and used it to infer tactile receptive fields in the fly VNC connectome.

authors.elsevier.com/a/1mvu83QW8S...

Applying for an ERC grant in the 2027 competitions: what you need to know The ERC plans to launch the grant competitions under its 2027 Work Programme between July 2026 and June 2027, with the calls for proposals introducing several changes to the eligibility rules for appl...

I don’t know if you saw the MASSIVE news announced by @erc.europa.eu today: from now on, if you get a B at step 1 you are eligible to apply at N+3(!!!) years. Say you got a B in STG2026 step 1, you thought you could apply in STG2028, but no: only in STG2029! erc.europa.eu/news-events/...

Congratulations 🎉🎉🎉🐟

Rapid temporal processing in the olfactory bulb underlies concentration-invariant odor identification and signal decorrelation - Nature Neuroscience This study shows that the brain’s smell center uses precise timing and inhibition to read out early odor signals, enabling reliable odor identity across concentrations while rapidly separating (decorr...

We are excited to share that this work has now been published in Nature Neuroscience. The study was co-supervised by @shyshoham.bsky.social and involved a fantastic team of postdocs: Mursel Karadas, @jonvgill.bsky.social and Sebastian Ceballo.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Amazing support for our Centre for Collective Behaviour!!🎉

Two individuals, a man and a woman, are seated and smiling in what appears to be an office or conference room setting.

Hans-Werner Hector + Rector Katharina Holzinger signed a new funding agreement for #UniKonstanz. The Hector Stiftung fosters cutting-edge research and enables the university to implement new developments regarding teaching, internationalization and transfer. https://t1p.de/sse8i @cbehav.bsky.social​

⏳ Two weeks left to send us your Satellite Workshop proposals for the #BernsteinConference 2026!

🗓️ Deadline: April 29, 15:00 CEST

More info 👉 bit.ly/40HybkI

#BernsteinNetwork #CompNeuro

Graphic announcing the MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2026 call. It shows the opening date (9 April 2026), closing date (9 September 2026), and a budget of €399.05 million. The design features scientific visuals such as cells, a leaf, and lab elements on a dark background, with the European Commission logo at the bottom.

Big opportunities for researchers 🌍

We are investing nearly €400 million to help researchers share their work and collaborate with the best scientific teams across the EU.

The 2026 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships are now open.

More: link.europa.eu/PNxpxw

Mit Ansage ❗❗

Applications are open for the Lake Conference on Comparative and Evolutionary Neurobiology - co-hosted with Circuit Neuroscience Basel!

🗓️ Oct. 25-29, 2026
📍 Seattle, WA
🧠 All career stages welcomed.

🔗 alleninstitute.org/events/lake-conference-c...

Are you a computational scientist? Within 7 years of your PhD? Come join us at Lund University! We have two new positions as assistant professor! Deadline: 25th of May. The advert is broad, but this is your chance to push computational neuroscience in a fantastic place!
lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

Rockefeller scientists, including @danielkronauer.bsky.social, Vanessa Ruta, Winrich Freiwald, Priya Rajasethupathy, and @erichjarvis.bsky.social, are learning what drives social behavior, and also trying to explain what happens when those roots falter.

🔗: https://bit.ly/47J2Q5h

We’re recruiting!

Exciting opportunities in our lab supported by a
@wellcometrust.bsky.social Discovery Award.

• Postdoctoral researchers
• Research assistant/PhD students

Join us to study how neural circuits drive decision-making.

Deadline 26/04

Learn more and Apply here: rezavallab.org

Ooceraea biroi - Copyright Max-Planck-Institut für chemische Ökologie

Forschende des Max-Planck-Instituts für chemische Ökologie in Jena identifizieren das erste Brutpheromon bei Ameisen – und beweisen damit, dass Larven die Fortpflanzung der Kolonie aktiv beeinflussen....
weiterlesen

Ooceraea biroi - Copyright Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena have identified the first brood pheromone in ants—thereby proving that larvae actively influence the colony’s reproduction....
weiterlesen

🧠 Johannes Kohl | Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientists Prize Lecture 🌟 At #FENS2026, join the Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientists Prize Lecture by Johannes Kohl, The Francis Crick Institute, on 9 July! 🔬 His lab integrates behavioural, systems and cellular approaches to uncover how internal states shape brain function and support adaptive social behaviour. 🏆 In 2025, he was awarded the Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientists Prize. His work has also been supported by EMBO, HFSP and Wellcome Trust, and received the Eppendorf and Science Prize for Neurobiology. Meet all the speakers 👉 https://buff.ly/wQ8V4Ha

🧠 Johannes Kohl | Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientists Prize Lecture

🌟 At #FENS2026, join the Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientists Prize Lecture by Johannes Kohl, @crick.ac.uk, on 9 July!

Meet all the speakers 👉 buff.ly/wQ8V4Ha

Was great to catch up with everybody!! Looking forward to the next meeting and awesome new science 🪰🐝🐭

Logo-Schriftzug Walter Benjamin Programm mit Pfeil und Datumsangaben: Dienstag, 14. April 2026, 14:30 bis 16 Uhr. Außerdem Hinweis auf Kurzlink: www.dfg.de/prospects

Auf dem Weg zu früher unabhängiger Forschung?

Das Walter Benjamin-Programm bietet optimale Möglichkeiten, ein eigenständiges Profil zu entwickeln - an einer passenden (auch ausländischen) Einrichtung.

In unserer Inforeihe #Prospects stellen wir nächste Woche alles Wichtige zu dem Programm vor. 👇

We're hiring!

Research Assistant position in our lab @champalimaudf.bsky.social in #Lisbon. Work on #diet - #brain and #microbiome - #metabolism projects using innovative #microscopy, #connectome and #metabolism methods. Start in May. Apply: ribeirolab.org

🎉🪰🎉🪰🎉🪰🎉🪰🎉🪰

Constructing connectome-based neural networks

Really excited to share a new preprint!

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗼 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘆 𝗿𝗼𝗯𝘂𝘀𝘁 & 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗯𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘀𝗲? We explore how!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We built Connectome-based Neural Networks (CoNNs) using Drosophila wiring (larva&adult) & compared with random networks with same sparsity.

Honeybee swarms do not come together and fall apart in the same way 🐝

In this new preprint led by Danielle Chase, we report how to trick swarms to repeatedly assemble and disassemble in front of our cameras, while tracking individual bees in 3D!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Secrets of the bees: Revealing the sneaky genius of nature's brightest thinkers New science is showing that nature’s vital pollinators are smarter than we ever imagined. Here’s why that discovery should change what we think about one of the world’s most important animals.

Lovely NatGeo article by Hannah Nordhaus, featuring plenty of "nature's brightest thinkers", former team members Mathieu Lihoreau and Olli Loukola, plus myself (and with excellent photography by Karine Aigner): www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

Neurobiology of Foraging: An Integrative Approach Foraging, defined as the search for food to sustain one's energetic needs, is a fundamental behavior performed by almost all animals to survive in their environment. Foraging involves a variety o...

After three years , this joint review with my dear friend Emily Jane Dennis is finally in press. The review provides a glimpse on what constitutes an integrative approach to neurobiology of foraging. Out in the next issue of Annual Reviews of Neuroscience.

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Another paper from our awesome lab out today @nature.com. Led by 🌟 PD Jihye Yeon with fantastic collaborators. We show how an ionotropic receptor (related to insect sensory IRs) in a single pharyngeal enteric neuron senses ingested salts and protects the worm from high salt stress.
rdcu.be/fbd4a

The Orange Cat Brain Atlas is here. 🧠🐈

Today, we published the first comprehensive cellular map of the orange cat brain. The new atlas reveals a single, specialized neuron responsible for behaviors like staring at walls, knocking objects off tables, and the 3am "zoomies."