Hagar Lavian

First whole-brain recording of social sound processing in a vertebrate. Surprises start in the hindbrain; thalamus gates conspecific calls; male and female brains diverge downstream. Work by @joerghenninger.bsky.social, @mh123.bsky.social sky.social and team. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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

Have you ever wondered how the brain should represent the sensory world in order to generate behavior? Read our new preprint: work by Shuhong Huang shuhonghuang.bsky.social with our long-standing collaborator James Fitzgerald at Northwestern.

Excited to see this preprint out! Siyuan Mei did exceptional work leading this project, and it was a great experience working with the Herz lab. How do zebrafish update their internal compass? They use a multi ring shifter network, similar to flies despite 550M years of divergence. Full thread ⬇️

1/n: A new collaborative preprint from the lab to start the year: "A multi-ring shifter network computes head direction in zebrafish" together with Siyuan Mei, Martin Stemmler and Andreas Herz from the LMU, Munich.

Asteroids, antibiotics and ants: a year of remarkable science Highlights from News & Views published in 2025.

Very proud to see our paper selected as one of Nature’s 2025 highlights!
@johanneskappel.bsky.social @jlarsch.bsky.social @mpiforbi.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Schematic of how ER-EPG plasticity enables the bump of activity in EPGs to accurately track visual cues. As a fly makes a counter-clockwise turn (top to bottom) it will view visual cues (e.g. the sun) from a new angle and the EPG activity bump (red) will swing clockwise around the network by integrating self motion signals with these visual inputs. When the fly faces a different angle, distinct visual ER neurons are active. Plasticity forms a trough of weak synapses (large circles - strong synapses, small circles - weak synapses) that allow ER neurons with distinct visual tuning to move the EPG bump via disinhibition.

*First preprint from our lab* !!!!!
How does the brain learn to anchor its internal sense of direction to the outside world? 🧭
led by Mark Plitt @markplitt.bsky.social & Dan Turner-Evans, w/ Vivek Jayaraman:
“Octopamine instructs head direction plasticity” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Thread ⬇️

Very excited to share this thread on our recent paper! We show how Zebrafish integrate visual navigation signals in aligned topographic maps. Full thread below🧵

Lighting and circadian cues shape locomotor strategies for balance and navigation in larval zebrafish Most fish are inherently unstable and must swim to stabilize posture. How diurnal fish reduce activity at night while maintaining postural control remains unclear. We defined distinct locomotor strate...

Like most animals, fish move less at night. Underwater, stable posture requires movement. Find out how fish don't fall down at night in: Lighting and circadian cues shape locomotor strategies for balance and navigation in larval zebrafish from @yunluzhu.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

New work from Baier Lab 🧠 🐟

🔗 to paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Zebrafish use spectral information to suppress the visual background Vertebrate eyes first evolved in water, where spectral content rapidly fades with distance. Zebrafish exploit this loss by antagonizing cone signals to suppress the background, pointing to distance estimation—rather than color—as an ancestral cone function.

Now online! Zebrafish use spectral information to suppress the visual background

Behavioral and circuit principles of temperature gradient navigation Behavioral thermoregulation is critical for survival across animals. Balakrishnan and Haesemeyer discover that thermoregulatory behavior in larval zebrafish is organized into longer-term swim modes. T...

Out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social led by Kaarthik A Balakrishnan: We identify medullary circuits that represent the valence of thermal stimuli and control both long-term strategies of cold-avoidance and short term hot avoidance behaviors to enable thermoregulation. www.cell.com/current-biol...

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

Zebrafish Study Reveals Hidden Dimensions of Attention - Harvard University - Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology Why do we sometimes falter at even the simplest of tasks? A new study from the lab of MCB Professor Florian Engert suggests that lapses in focus, rather […]

Zebrafish Study Reveals Hidden Dimensions of Attention🧠 🧪🧬 #AcademicSky #higherEd
www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n... @sterrett-sc.bsky.social @hannazwaka.bsky.social @zwitscherarmin.bsky.social @rachellegaudet.bsky.social @dulaclab.bsky.social @harvardbrainsci.bsky.social @neurovenki.bsky.social

The orbitofrontal cortex forms a context-generalized spatial schema that preserves topology and distance Flexible and efficient navigation requires the brain to construct maps that are both topological, preserving the relationships between locations, and schematic, enabling generalization across environm...

Ever wonder if there are spatial maps in the brain outside the hippocampal-entorhinal regions? In this preprint, we describe a novel spatial map in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) that preserves the topological arrangements and distance between locations. However, ...

www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Granularity of thalamic head direction cells Head direction signaling is fundamental for spatial orientation and navigation. The anterodorsal nucleus of the thalamus (ADn) contains a high density of head direction (HD) cells that process sensori...

*New preprint from the lab* – “Granularity of thalamic head direction cells”
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
🧠📈 🧪
1/11

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/...

🧵1/

Preprint -
Excited to present WHOLISTIC, which extends the concept of whole-brain functional imaging to the entire body. Pioneering work by incredibly talented Virginia Ruetten @vmsruetten.bsky.social, this platform reveals whole-organism cellular dynamics in vivo.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Now published @natecoevo.nature.com with @annika-nichols.bsky.social, our latest on the evolution of 𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘱 across 𝟲𝟬 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘀 of cichlid fishes! doi.org/10.1038/s415...
with members of the @schierlab.bsky.social and Salzburger labs, as well as the burgeoning Shafer lab @uoftcellsysbiol.bsky.social

In the past year and a half, we have been intensively protesting and fighting the Israeli government in an attempt to stop the war, secure the release of all hostages, and prevent the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Until now, our protests have primarily been focused internally.

Tomorrow at 19:30 a huge demonstration in Tel Aviv - The Israeli Academia demands to end the war NOW. These horrors are unbearable and must stop.

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.

Scientific research is at the heart of Israel’s success and has worldwide benefits. Our work will continue despite adversity, says Alon Chen

https://go.nature.com/40wXMx6

FlyVISTA, an integrated machine learning platform for deep phenotyping of sleep in Drosophila A machine learning platform identifies and characterizes the dynamics of microbehaviors during fly sleep.

I am proud to share that our work of 4+ years has finally been published. We wondered if there are distinct behaviors that mark sleep in 🪰, where sleep has been defined as prolonged immobility.
🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A zebrafish circuit for behavioral credit assignment - preLights Neural blueprint for credit assignment in zebrafish: linking specific actions to outcomes via a dorsal habenula–interpeduncular circuit.

Neural blueprint for credit assignment in zebrafish 🐟

@sinanmalik.bsky.social covers work describing how motor actions are linked with sensory feedback via the dorsal habenula–interpeduncular pathway
#preprint from the Portugues Lab #TU_Muenchen

#preLight⬇️
prelights.biologists.com/highlights/a...