The Brain Conference on Neural Foundations of Communication: Integrative Approaches Across Species - Federation of European Neuroscience Societies Location: Heraklion, Crete, Greece Early registration and stipend applications deadline: 7 April 2026 Regular registration and abstract submission deadline (no further stipend applications accepted)…

This conference is going to be so cool! Good science good people good location. Register ASAP! #neuroskyence

www.fens.org/news-activit...

cOMPaRatiVe cOGNitiONHumans share acousticpreferences with other animalsLogan S. James1,2,3,4* Sarah C. Woolley 1,2, Jon T. Sakata1,2,Courtney B. Hilton5,6, Michael J. Ryan3,4, Samuel A. Mehr5,7,8Many animals produce courtship sounds, and receivers prefersome sounds over others. Shared ancestry and convergentevolution may generate similarities in preference across speciesand underlie Darwin’s conjecture that some animals “havenearly the same taste for the beautiful as we have.” In this study,we show that humans share acoustic preferences with a rangeof animals, that the strength of human preferences correlateswith that in other animals, and that humans respond fasterwhen in agreement with animals. Furthermore, we foundgreatest agreement in preference for adorned, ancestral, andlower-frequency sounds. humans’ music listening experiencewas associated with preferences. These results are consistentwith theories arguing that biases in processing sculpt acousticpreferences, and they confirm Darwin’s century-old hunchabout the conservation of aesthetics in nature

out now in Science: @loganjames.bsky.social collected pairs of sounds in 16 species where we *know* which sound is more attractive (to that species)

he played them to ppl on themusiclab.org, asking, in each pair, which was nicer. humans agreed w other animals

doi.org/10.1126/science.aea1202

Hello #cosyne2026! Sadly I am present only in spectral form 🔮 (i.e. in spirit)

Luckily Zetian and I managed to send a distinguished representative

Check out our poster Saturday (3-075) on cortical control of vocalization in parrots!🦜🏴‍☠️

M Loooong himself is presenting so go give him a hard time ;)

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...

Super excited to give a talk in the main auditorium at COSYNE in Lisbon about my ongoing PhD work on how the hippocampus supports vocal interactions in singing mice! 🐭🎤♬🧠

📍 Auditorium I
🗓 Mar 13 (Fri) 9:30–9:45

#COSYNE2026

Neuronal spiking in the mammalian forebrain is dominated by a heterogeneous ground state Neuronal firing patterns have significant spatiotemporal variability with no agreed-upon theoretical framework. Using a combined experimental and mode…

With this one in print, I think I finally earned that PhD... 😅
Presented for the first time at the cosyne when the world ended (March 2020). I'll bring over a summary thread from twitter when it was still twitter...

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

congrats Jonathan!!!

We had a lot of fun doing these experiments! Theta sweeps in MEC and internal direction signals in parasubiculum track moving objects during pursuit and reverse during backward movement. Simultaneously recorded HD cells in other areas remain locked to head direction across behaviors:

The hippocampal map has its own attentional control signal!
Our new study reveals that theta #sweeps can be instantly biased towards behaviourally relevant locations. See 📹 in post 4/6 and preprint here 👉
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🧵(1/6)

How do past sensory experiences prepare us for new ones? Our new paper tackles this long-standing question, revealing a role for activity sequences in the olfactory bulb. Excited to share our work led by @jonvgill.bsky.social with Mursel Karadas & Shy Shoham
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Creating Reproducible Sandbox Environments for HPC with Singularity I walk through how I create a container image for use on the HPC, mainly as a note to myself.

Mostly just a note for future me.
yukifujishima.com/blog/2026/01...

Very clever use of unnatural playback stimuli to reveal the hierarchical logic of acoustic production in nightingales! Congratulations @danielavallentin.bsky.social and team.

By the way, if you’re interested in working together on problems like this, I’m starting my lab at UCSF this summer. Get in touch if you’re interested in doing a postdoc! More info here: wj2.github.io/postdoc_ad (7/7)

Made summer travel plans yet? How about a trip to Greece? This conference looks fantastic!

conferences.weizmann.ac.il/NBNB2026/spe...

Merry Christmas! 🎄🎤🐭🎵

Singing mice speak volumes | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory All mice squeak, but only some sing. Scotinomys teguina, aka Alston’s singing mice, hail from the cloud forests of Costa Rica. More than 2,000 miles north, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) neurosc...

Ever see a mouse stand on its hind legs and belt out a song?@xmikezheng20.bsky.social, @cliffscience.bsky.social, and @arkarupbanerjee.bsky.social track this behavior in Alston’s singing mice. See what it might say about the origins of communication. cshl.edu/singing-mice-speak-volumes/

Jolie, an adult female chimpanzee of the Ngogo community in Kibale National Park, Uganda, with sleeping infant son, Zawinul. CREDIT: Kevin Langergraber

After the Ngogo chimpanzee group killed 21 members of neighboring groups and expanded their territory by 22%, female birth rates more than doubled and infant survival increased sharply—showing clear fitness benefits from intergroup killing. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/TKmf50XuPjY

Bird Brains and Behavior: A Synthesis From two avian neurobiologists, a captivating deep dive into the mechanisms that control avian behavior.The last few decades have produced extensive resear

A reminder to anyone interested in #brains #birds or behaviour, our new book is available for FREE as an ebook in addition to print copies.
#neuroethology #neuroskyence #ornithology 🧪🧠🪶

direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

As a longtime fan of cool papers in @currentbiology.bsky.social, I am really thrilled to see this out!

This study sets the stage for understanding the origins of novel (vocal) behaviors.

Big shout out to the main architects of this work @xmikezheng20.bsky.social and @cliffscience.bsky.social

LLMs get a lot of attention but if you are interested in the original (allegedly) stochastic parrots come to my poster Tuesday where I will present new work on the natural vocal behavior or parrots and its cortical control #Sfn2025 #SfN25

Almost everyone from my lab is at #SfN25. Check out what we have been up to! Unfortunately I have to miss it due to a recent ankle surgery. #FOMO

Come see our poster to learn how the hippocampus supports turn-taking vocal interaction in Central American singing mice! #Sfn2025 #SfN25

Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito Understanding how life is adapting to urban environments represents an important challenge in evolutionary biology. In this work, we investigate a widely cited example of urban adaptation, Culex pipie...

How does life evolve to adapt to modern cities?

Out now in Science, my PhD work with @lindymcbr.bsky.social uncovers the ancient origin of the “London Underground mosquito” – one of the most iconic examples of urban adaptation.

🧵(1/n)
@science.org
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4515

One week until this fantastic seminar with speakers @cliffscience.bsky.social and @leo-perrier.bsky.social

Register here for the link!

braincoustics.com

#bioacoustics
#neuroskyence

Bat Island: The New Era of Science YouTube video by Weizmann Institute of Science

Neuroscience projects last several years, and you are usually a bit jaded by the time you wrap it up. Not this one– spending several months on an island in the middle of nowhere, away from all the craziness of the world reminds you how beautiful the world really is.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=46sv...

The work with bats on barren, 7-acre Latham Island was Nachum Ulanovsky’s most complex undertaking yet.

By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/neuroetholog...

New paper on precise tool use learning in carrion crows @currentbiology.bsky.social. We show that—like New Caledonian crows—expert carrion crows pay close attention to the working end of their tool, suggesting tool integration into their peripersonal space. 🧵 & vids! 👇

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

Singing mice made their concert debut! The Secret Lives of Rodent Divas, a 4 movement piece by Kathryn Mishell, was recently performed in Austin, TX. I was happy to contribute some songs. Kathryn kindly shared the concert video. Please take a listen ♬
youtu.be/IHn0b7kgo34?si…

My latest Aronov lab paper is now published @Nature!

When a chickadee looks at a distant location, the same place cells activate as if it were actually there 👁️

The hippocampus encodes where the bird is looking, AND what it expects to see next -- enabling spatial reasoning from afar

bit.ly/3HvWSum