Mark Brandon

All theory is wrong until verified by data. Greatly indebted to @mhyaghoubi.bsky.social, @markbrandonlab.bsky.social, @douglasresearch.bsky.social for finding the hippocampus encoding reward prediction! Grateful to my advisor @cpehlevan.bsky.social, @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social.
#RL #hippocampus

Thanks Hugo!

Thanks Adrien!

I’m very happy to share the latest from my lab published in @Nature

Hippocampal neurons that initially encode reward shift their tuning over the course of days to precede or predict reward.

Full text here:
rdcu.be/eY5nh

Fantastic work!

New paper from the lab, now out in @PNASNews

tinyurl.com/bdeh2bs8

- ADN neurons (head direction cells) project to MEC inhibitory cells, with a preference for VIP-expressing cells

- MEC VIP cells increase cfos expression during, and are required for, a spatial memory task

How good is your place cell model?

Come benchmark yours against real data - nearly 70K CA1 rate maps in various geometric shapes across weeks - collected and curated in my lab by the great @jquinnlee.bsky.social and @atkeinath.bsky.social

The dataset and code for our recent paper in Neuron (tinyurl.com/yc48d6vr) is online now!
The data is available on Zenodo (zenodo.org/records/1486...) and code on Github (github.com/jquinnlee/ge...). Big thanks to @markbrandonlab.bsky.social and @atkeinath.bsky.social on this effort! #neuroskyence 🧠

Stuart, Mark, Gilberto, and me!

Congrats Dr Gilberto R Vite! 🎉🍾

Gilberto successfully defended his PhD, on the role of the thalamus in coordinating activity in the entorhinal cortex.

Big thanks to his committee, Laura Colgin, @markbrandonlab.bsky.social, Stuart Trenholm, and @sylvainbaillet.bsky.social 🙏🙏

Grateful to @apnews.com for covering our recent @pnas.org article on how London taxi drivers plan routes:

apnews.com/video/how-th...

#neuroskyence

Screenshot of article entitled "Distinct changes to hippocampal and medial entorhinal circuits emerge across the progression of cognitive deficits in epilepsy" by Yu Feng, Keziah S. Diego, Zhe Dong, ..., Nadia N. Khan, Denise J. Cai, and Tristan Shuman. In brief: Feng et al. demonstrate that memory deficits in temporal lobe epilepsy involve multiple discrete mechanisms with distinct time courses. In epileptic mice, early-onset memory deficits are associated with disrupted hippocampal synchronization, while more severe, lateonset impairments are associated with disrupted synchrony of medial entorhinal cortex circuits.

New paper out in Cell Reports! Led by @susieyufeng.bsky.social, we found that chronic epilepsy in mice drives distinct synchronization deficits in hippocampus and MEC, with early changes in HPC and late-onset changes in MEC that align with progressive memory impairment.
www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Here is the MIT Tech Review article covering the data collection linked to this new Phd Opportunity at our new International Centre for NeuroArchitecture and NeuroDesign:

www.technologyreview.com/2024/09/13/1...

What are the brain’s “real” tuning curves?

Our new preprint "SIMPL: Scalable and hassle-free optimisation of neural representations from behaviour” argues that existing techniques for latent variable discovery are lacking.

We suggest a much simpl-er way to do things.
1/21🧵

Now out in Neuron! We benchmark place cell models using a massive CA1 dataset—nearly 70,000 rate maps—collected as mice explore environments with different geometries

BVC models perform remarkably well, but we hope this dataset/approach becomes a resource for testing/refining place cell models