Laura Grima

Plot showing metabolic rate and brain size vs. body mass. Warm-blooded animals expend an order of magnitude more energy and have brain sizes an order of magnitude larger

Soapbox time: the problem with metabolic efficiency arguments in neuroscience is that they often confuse energy efficiency with energy expenditure. Biological systems are optimized for energy efficiency, but that does NOT imply they are optimized for low energy expenditure 🧵 1/

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.

Thanks so much for having me Cian!

Beautiful set of experiments. Congrats Lauren et al!

That’s kind of you Aidan, thank you!

Excited to announce our new pre-print (www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...)!

This collaborative work (co-led by Adriane Otopalik and Gerry Rubin) examines how neuronal circuits regulate social behaviors, like courtship🫶 and aggression🥊, across sexes. #neuroscience #Drosophila #WomenInSTEM 🧪1/

I’m broadly in agreement here (and have experienced something similar in reviewing before) - but what if there is an alternative interpretation that is equally (or more) consistent with the data? It doesn’t feel quite right to let that slide entirely…

'Foraging as an ethological framework for neuroscience'

by @LauraGrima.bsky.social, @Hannah-Haberkern.bsky.social, Rishika Mohanta, @MaimMorimoto.bsky.social @adiraj95.bsky.social @EmmavScholey.bsky.social

www.cell.com/trends/neuro...

🚨Registration for Mechanistic Basis of Foraging 2025 closes October 20th 🚨

Speakers
@mkflugge.bsky.social @aaronbornstein.bsky.social @benhayden.bsky.social @ellileadbeater.bsky.social
@davidrobbe.bsky.social @dlbarack.bsky.social @becketebs.bsky.social

uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...

Amazing! Hard to believe this didn't exist until now.

Thanks Aidan! And that’s a shame, would’ve been great to catch up. Another time!

YouTube video by Sensorimotor AI RL Debate Series: Eli "abolish the value function" Sennesh

We started our RL debate series!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0A0...

Male CNS Connectome A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system —a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the ...

We're very proud to be releasing the complete male fly CNS connectome!

It's the product of a huge team effort here at Janelia in partnership with the Cambridge Fly Connectomics group (@jefferis.bsky.social and colleagues), plus invaluable collaborators.

More soon...
www.janelia.org/project-team...

You’re not the first person to point out that this is becoming a popular topic of investigation…! I have a lot of thoughts on why this is happening but to answer your question specifically we are broadly independent of (but interested in) those large-scale efforts

To end, I am very grateful for all of the people who contributed to any of this work at various stages - and of course in particular my co-authors/conference organizers @hannah-haberkern.bsky.social @adiraj95.bsky.social @maimmorimoto.bsky.social @neurorishika.bsky.social @emmavscholey.bsky.social

I wanted to share all of this firstly so that others know about these resources - but also as an example of how enjoyable it can be to deeply engage with the (neuro)scientific community in various ways. Together this really embodies (to me at least) why this work and career can be so fulfilling.

Plus, there's now a related conference organized by some wonderful people @unibirmingham.bsky.social in the UK, including @brainapps.bsky.social, @markdhumphries.bsky.social, and others. (Registration for this conference is still open until the 20th October!) uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...

The conference brought together researchers from a wide range of backgrounds and was full of incredibly fruitful discussions. It also ultimately spurred us into writing a review as a way to bring together everything we had learned.

Bridging Diverse Perspectives on the Mechanistic Basis of Foraging Organizers Laura Grima, Janelia Research Campus/HHMI Hannah Haberkern, University of Würzburg Rishika Mohanta, Rockefeller University Mai Morimoto, Queen Mary University of London Adithya

As things got back to 'normal' post-pandemic, the next logical step was to get everyone together in person. Thanks to the great conference organizing team @janeliaconf.bsky.social, we were able to host our 'mechanistic basis of foraging' conference in February of 2024 www.janelia.org/you-janelia/...

Future of Foraging Seminar Series

Our team grew, and the seminar series ended up spanning 16 episodes across 3 seasons, from 2021-2023. All episodes can be found on our YouTube channel here: www.youtube.com/@futureoffor...

YouTube video by Future of Foraging Seminar Series S1E1 Alex Kacelnik - What is Foraging?

Thanks to the state of the world at the time, an online seminar series seemed a good start. So we, along with some of our friends at @champalimaudf.bsky.social, set up 'The Future of Foraging', kicking off with a great talk from Alex Kacelnik on "What is foraging?" www.youtube.com/watch?v=B44M...

A little backstory on this one: sometime during the pandemic @hannah-haberkern.bsky.social and I were chatting in the servery at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social about how to encourage interactions between people working on foraging (+ neuroscience) across different species and perspectives... 1/n

Congratulations Juan!

Had a lot of fun co-writing to this review! Discussing #foraging through the lens of neuroscience.

If you want to hear about more like this, come join us at the University of Birmingham for ‘The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging’ conference. Registration closes 20th October!
uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...

Really excited to share a review I contributed to, out now in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social. We explore how foraging can offer a framework for studying brain and behaviour in natural contexts. It’s been a pleasure working with colleagues across species and disciplines on this. Check it out! 👇

Years ago @lauragrima.bsky.social talked about what a pity it is when scientists who work on #foraging miss out on fruitful interactions because they work with different animals. Together with collegues we started a virtual seminar series, which grew into a conference and now a review!

Inspired by discussions at several recent foraging-related seminar series and conferences, our review in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social explores an expanded role for foraging as a framework in neuroscience and discusses future directions for the field. Do check it out.

doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...

Very fun to write this with such great co-authors - @hannah-haberkern.bsky.social @maimmorimoto.bsky.social @maimmorimoto.bsky.social @adiraj95.bsky.social @emmavscholey.bsky.social and Rishika Mohanta.

Foraging as an ethological framework for neuroscience The study of foraging is central to a renewed interest in naturalistic behavior in neuroscience. Applying a foraging framework grounded in behavioral …

Pleased to have this review out in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social. In it we discuss various aspects of the intersection between foraging behaviors and neuroscience, and offer some future directions: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...