Excited to share a new review by @kocherlab.bsky.social and me:

Nature-inspired neuroscience

We discuss diverse sensory systems and behaviors across the animal kingdom and argue for their integration into neuroscience. New tools in diverse systems are making this possible ✨

tinyurl.com/y5y9du27

Risk reshapes amygdala representation of choice Piantadosi et al. show mice flexibly adjust choices between reward options based on the punishment potential in a BLA-dependent manner. They find that BLA neuronal representation of punishment reactiv...

Risk reshapes amygdala representation of choice: Neuron www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

The neural mechanisms supporting the rise and fall of maternal aggression - Nature In mice, female aggression is governed by an amygdala–to–medial hypothalamus circuit that is strengthened during pregnancy and is dynamically amplified by oxytocin during lactation.

What has changed in mama bear brain (well, actually mice) to make her risk her life to attack a potential threat and protect her young? Oxytocin is the key! Happy to share our new study led by two awesome postdocs: Takashi Yamaguchi and Rongzhen Yan.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share our latest work with @antihebbiann.bsky.social, revealing a top-down mechanism regulating the fragmentation of feeding, led by Tianbo Qi.

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

1/8 New preprint alert!

How are signals from the heart encoded in the brain?
What could be the functional implications of cardioception?

We found that neurons in the posterior insular cortex are precisely tuned to heartbeats, and that this cardio-insular coupling supports emotion coding in mice.

Cortical regulation of collective social dynamics during environmental challenge - Nature Neuroscience Raam, Li, Gu and colleagues identify neural mechanisms underlying group huddling in mice during cold exposure. They find that the prefrontal cortex encodes decisions to huddle and that silencing neura...

Excited to share my postdoc work is out in @natneuro.nature.com today!

We examined how the brain enables social groups to collectively coordinate their behavior in the face of environmental challenge ❄️🐭🐭🐭🐭❄️ :

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

🔥🔥🔥Meeting Alert🔥🔥🔥
Come join us in Regensburg for
"Neurobiology of Socio-Emotional Dysfunctions"
Fantastic speakers & beautiful city = must come!
👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇
go.ur.de/neuro-dysfun...

Hey Hypothalamus heads! We are now accepting abstracts for the HypoGRC this August (now at the lovely Sunday River location). We have an exciting program planned for you so that we can really wild out about our favorite subcortical region. www.grc.org/hypothalamus...

1/7 🧠 My journey into development begins with this work and question: how does the brain's spatial navigation system develop? We found that the neural networks for spatial navigation (tori and rings) are preconfigured and only later anchor gradually to the world with experience! 🧵

Is spatial navigation innate 🧠? Using #NeuroPixels we show that the #torus 🍩 underlying the #GridCell map exists already on day 10 in rats — before pups open eyes and ears and before they start upright walking. 🧵1:4
👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨New paper alert🚨
We built a fully standardized, integrated hardware and software solution for real-time welfare monitoring in mice. We used it to look at pain management after brain surgery.
Not much has changed from the preprint (see below).
Brief: hold back on opioids!
doi.org/10.1038/s416...

Excited to share our latest work in @nature.com showing shared neural substrates for parenting and prosocial helping behavior. Full text available here: rdcu.be/e6PnY

Agouti integrates environmental cues to regulate paternal behaviour - Nature Expression of agouti signalling protein in neurons in the medial preoptic area is increased by group housing and negatively associated with care, and overexpression of Agouti reduces care and enhances...

Why are some males caring toward infants while others are neglectful or abusive? I'm so pleased to share work that my colleagues and I @princeton.edu have just published @nature.com (an explanatory thread to follow!) (1/8)

A dorsal hippocampus-prodynorphinergic dorsolateral septum-to-lateral hypothalamus circuit mediates contextual gating of feeding Goode et al. show that prodynorphin (Pdyn)-expressing neurons of the dorsolateral septum (DLS) receive substantial dorsal hippocampal (DHPC) input and inhibit lateral hypothalamic (LHA) GABAergic neur...

Restaurants, billboards, commercials… what brain circuits link context to appetite? 🧠🌎🍽️

Very happy to finally share a major update in our work exploring the hippocampus and lateral septum in calibrating food consumption! 🍩

Major thanks to our lab and collaborators! ⭐️⭐️

www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

New paper alert! 🚨

We found that the brain's compass is remarkably stable at two scales

1️⃣ the system maintains its internal organization for weeks
2️⃣ It "remembers" its orientation for weeks, even after a single visit

This may be key to how the brain aligns its other maps.

Paper: rdcu.be/e3waP

Our new paper (with @biotay.bsky.social) is out and on the cover story of @currentbiology.bsky.social !!!! Veronika, a Carinthian mountain cow flexibly uses a “multi-purpose tool” to scratch herself. A video and more information will follow in the comments.
www.cell.com/current-biol...

Extremely excited & proud to share our new preprint - we provide for the first time a single cell map of the mouse brain across sex, the estrous cycle, and peripartum! Data are 🔥 👇

"Single-cell map of the female brain across reproductive transitions"

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

Cell Type-Specific Hormonal Signaling Configures Hypothalamic Circuits for Parenting Parenting behavior emerges from hormonally sensitive circuits, but how distinct circuit components are affected by, and contribute to, sex and state dependent changes in infant caregiving remains uncl...

New paper alert!!...🤩 Led by @blogeman.bsky.social, we identify how cell type-specific hormonal responses in the hypothalamus tunes parenting behavior in males and females 🐭🧠🍼. Highlights in thread 👇 1/6

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

High-fat food reinforces risk taking by suppressing defensive neurons This study by de Araujo Salgado and Krashes reveals how high-fat diets suppress defensive neural circuits, driving riskier foraging in the presence of predation. The findings highlight how high-fat fo...

A high #fat #diet increases risk taking and suppresses escape neurons
in🐁🐁🐁
#neuroscience

www.cell.com/current-biol...

New paper out today w @dalmaijer.bsky.social @barbaraklump.bsky.social and @lucymaplin.bsky.social as part of the Phil Trans special issue doi.org/10.1098/rstb.... Over 2 years, we studied a population of cockatoos thought to be the source of the innovation of bin-opening.

snRNA-seq of Huntington′s disease mice reveals vulnerability profiles of cortical cell types A common feature of neurodegeneration is selective vulnerability, where certain neurons succumb to disease, while others remain spared. The molecular underpinnings of these differences remain elusive....

New preprint from the lab by Dennis Feigenbutz et al.: Using #snRNA-seq, we explore vulnerability profiles of cortical cell types in #HuntingtonsDisease mice and identify ER-phagy as a new pathway in HD pathogenesis.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Evolution of taste processing shifts dietary preference - Nature Calcium imaging of taste neurons and the ventral brain provides insight into evolutionary divergence of food choice in Drosophila species, supporting a role of sensorimotor processing in addition to p...

Thrilled to share our new paper!
With @tomtom-auer.bsky.social team, we asked how #evolution reshapes what animals #eat to match their ecological niches. Using pan-neuronal Ca2+ imaging, we show that the changes are in how the brain processes #taste.
Link @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very excited and proud to share my postdoctoral research with @neurrriot.bsky.social looking at the context-specific encoding of social behavior 💃🕺 in hormone-sensitive, large-scale brain networks in mice!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#neuroskyence #compneurosky 🧪
1/12

Integration of hunger and hormonal state gates infant-directed aggression - Nature Combined behavioural, circuit-level and cellular approaches are used to demonstrate how hypothalamic neurons integrate hunger and oestrous state to drive a switch in how female mice interact with pups...

Out today in Nature: We uncover a neural mechanism for the integration of two internal states - hunger and estrous state - and how this integration shapes pup-directed behaviors in mice.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am thrilled to share our latest work: we identified a population of central amygdala neurons that promote the earliest and perhaps most important social behavior: pup suckling!... We also developed new tools for pup neuroscience
Work by @Jeff Moore now at USC, a collaboration with @Sam Pfaff lab

Excited to share our new #biorxivpreprint:
“Sexual dimorphism in the complete connectome of the Drosophila male central nervous system” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We describe the #connectomics reconstruction and analysis of an entire adult #maleCNS #drosophila central nervous system. 1/10

A parabrachial hub for need-state control of enduring pain - Nature Activity in a set of parabranchial neurons in the mouse brain is increased during chronic pain, predicts coping behaviour, and can be modulated by circuits activated by survival threats.

Finally out: our recent work with Nick Betley is a view into how the brain reshapes its behavior in the face of competing survival needs- and also a potential angle on treatment targets for enduring pain.

A brief rundown...

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

Maternal aggression driven by the transient mobilisation of a dormant hormone-sensitive circuit - Nature Communications Mothers can fiercely defend their young, but how the brain triggers this response remains to a large extent a mystery. Here, authors show that a dormant, hormone-sensitive brain circuit switches on to spark maternal aggression during the lactation period.

1/n. New paper from us: here we explore the mechanisms underlying maternal aggression in mice as a means of addressing how an individual transiently can gain access to a behaviour normally outside of its repertoire. Lead investigator Stefanos Stagkourakis (not on 🦋)🧵:

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

https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/MABe-mouse-behavior-detection

And we are live!

Excited to announce the 2025 Multi-Agent Behavior Challenge on cross-lab supervised action recognition in mice 🐁🐀🖱️

Running on Kaggle until December 15th, with a $50,000 prize pool going to the top five submissions!

www.kaggle.com/competitions...

Thrilled to share that our work is now published in Science! ✨

We found a preference for visual objects in the mouse spatial navigation system where they dynamically refine head-direction coding. In short, objects boost our inner compass! 🧭

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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