Saikat Ray

How Animals Build a Sense of Direction Podcast Episode · The Quanta Podcast · 02/17/2026 · 24m

When you navigate busy streets, a set of neurons is helping to guide you. But it’s not easy to simulate mental map-building in a lab.

Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/h...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/50Fx...

This is Latham Island, a seven-acre speck of land in the Indian Ocean. Here, neuroscientists recorded the brain activity of Egyptian fruit bats as they explored the novel habitat to study the animals’ "internal compass" in the wild, beyond the lab. www.quantamagazine.org/how-animals-...

How Animals Build a Sense of Direction | Quanta Magazine Researchers documented the activity of neurons that shape directional navigation as bats explored a remote island off the coast of Tanzania.

How does your brain build a sense of direction? New studies into animals’ internal compass could help explain the feeling of getting “turned around”, or even why some of us are so bad at finding our way. @yaseminsaplakoglu.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/how-animals-...

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

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

The Ulanovsky lab will have 6 posters Monday afternoon: 1 lab, 1 tunnel, 3 island, and 1 lab on the island (don't ask), SS6-SS11
Come say hi!

Diving in with Nachum Ulanovsky With an eye toward realism, the neuroscientist, who has a new study about bats out today, creates microcosms of the natural world to understand animal behavior.

Naturalistic approaches such as Ulanovsky’s open up “potential opportunities to really reveal why the brain is structured in the way it’s structured,” says Iain Couzin.

By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/neuroetholog...

Neural compass in the sky Head-direction neurons maintain stable directional signals during large-scale navigation in the wild

Check out the study - www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

and a great perspective on it -
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

and @shakedpa.bsky.social 's thread.

And like all good projects – it’s only the beginning…

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...

I am excited to share my PhD work on head-direction cells recorded in the wild, now published in @science.org, where we recorded neurons in bats flying outdoors on an island.

doi.org/10.1126/sci...

With @ray-neuro.bsky.social, Shir Maimon, Liora Las, Nachum Ulanovsky and many others

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...

Head-direction cells as a neural compass in bats navigating outdoors on a remote oceanic island Animals and humans rely on their navigation skills to survive. However, spatial neurons in the brain’s “navigation circuit” had not previously been studied under real-world conditions. We conducted an...

DOI is not up yet, but this is the link:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This is such a fun meeting. If you are in social neuroscience - you should come. Heck even if you are not - the science is great in general! And a fun mix of animal and human research!

Next time in Canada!

🦇 In a bat colony, neurons build more than a map of space. They code for identity, interactions, and social ties, creating a socio-spatial “map” of the community and social life itself!
Read the full story 👉 zurl.co/JInQs
🧪 #HFSPFellowships #sts #HFSPscience

See you in Lisbon next week!

Really interesting study showing learning of tool use in carrion crows! www.cell.com/current-biol...

A neuronal correlate for time interval estimation in the crow’s telencephalon - Nature Communications It is unknown how birds estimate time using brains organized differently from mammals. Here, the authors show that neurons in the crow NCL encode duration categories, supporting abstract, cue-independ...

I'm usually not very active here, but good news:
Together with @milliejohnston.bsky.social, our paper on time estimation in #crows got published in @natcomms.nature.com today!
We found crow neurons track time like a stopwatch — without a cortex! 🐦⏱️🧠
#SciComm #Science 🧪
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@danielavallentin.bsky.social moving on to birds that really sing - nightingales in the wild!

How does a bird remember where it stored its food? @selmaan.bsky.social telling us about neural mechanisms leading to this fascinating behaviour

@arkarupbanerjee.bsky.social revealing what neural mechanisms are conserved and what have diverged between lab mice and singing mice

Michael Brecht talking about why the differences in brain size in elephants might be more important than the differences in their ear sizes @behaviour2025.bsky.social

Hope to see you on Monday! This will be fun!

Have you registered yet? 😁

Secure your spot at #S4SN2025 at share.google/vRumlIDQBNLX... and join us this September in beautiful Lisbon! ✨

The new issue is out👉https://www.cell.com/cell/current
⁠
On the cover, Eliav et al. reveal that hippocampal replays in bats flying in very large, naturalistic environments were highly fragmented and short, depicting trajectories covering only a small portion of the environment size.

🚨Very happy that my PhD work is now out in @nature.com!

We discovered that evolution, by acting in the midbrain, shifted the threshold to escape in Peromyscus mice, to fine-tune defensive strategies in different environments

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

This was a truly collaborative effort! 🧵⬇️

🙋‍♂️

How we’re rebuilding the Weizmann Institute — and our hopes for a better future Scientific research is at the heart of Israel’s success and has worldwide benefits. Our work will continue despite adversity.

"I look forward to the day when Israeli scientists can freely collaborate with scientists in Iran and do good for the region and for humanity. I wish the same for scientists in Gaza and throughout the Middle East." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Come visit Calcutta in the last week of August and see some amazing neuroscientists talk about the neural basis of behaviour at @behaviour2025.bsky.social

With @neuroetho.bsky.social @danielavallentin.bsky.social @selmaan.bsky.social @arkarupbanerjee.bsky.social and Michael Brecht!

Please join us in Lisbon for the 2025 S4SN (@s4sn.bsky.social) meeting this year. We have a wonderful set of speakers and symposium sessions!! 👇👇

Fragmented replay of very large environments in the hippocampus of bats Hippocampal replays in bats flying in a 200-m tunnel depict short fragments of long flight trajectories, suggesting constraints on the mechanisms and functions of replay.

Very, very cool paper from @tamir-eliav.bsky.social and the Ulanovsky lab!
www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

This photograph captures Sir David Attenborough seated outdoors on the rugged terrain of Skomer Island. Behind him, the ocean and coastal cliffs form a scenic backdrop under a clear sky. Sir David, dressed in a khaki jacket and light trousers, looks towards the camera with a gentle expression, exuding a sense of warmth, calm, and wisdom. Around him, puffins can be seen flying and perched on the rocky ground, illuminated in rays of golden sunlight as the sun sets behind the cliffs.

Happy 99th birthday to the man who gave voice to the wild. 🎉

Sir David Attenborough, thank you for a lifetime dedicated to the natural world, and for sharing its story with wisdom, wonder, and grace.

You've inspired generations to fall in love with nature.