Datta Lab

🚨Our preprint is online!🚨

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning?

Read on to find out more! 🧵

Transcriptional Interference Gates Monogenic Odorant Receptor Expression in Ants Communication is crucial to social life, and in ants, it is mediated primarily through olfaction. Ants have more odorant receptor (OR) genes than any other group of insects, generated through tandem d...

If you’re interested in ants, olfaction, gene regulation, or all of the above, here’s a new preprint from the lab for you. It describes an unorthodox mechanism of transcriptional interference by which ant olfactory sensory neurons produce a single functional receptor.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Derek Guy says this season it should be pants with pleats, but honestly, I just can't quit flat fronts.

More new science from the lab! Led by @nathancsharris.bsky.social (now at GA State) and PD Priya Dutta.

We describe how experience tunes the ratios of functional receptors in a single sensory neuron via coordinating transcriptional and post-transcriptional mechanisms to drive response plasticity.

Very happy about my former mentor Sara Solla having received the Valentin Braitenberg Award for her lifelong contributions to computational neuroscience!

Sara will be giving a lecture at the upcoming @bernsteinneuro.bsky.social meeting which you shouldn't miss.

bernstein-network.de/en/newsroom/...

Cross-species connectome comparison shows uneven olfactory circuit evolution in flies The findings start to reveal evolutionary changes that may have helped two species develop different olfactory preferences and adapt to their particular environments.

Some parts of the Drosophila olfactory circuit have evolved more than others, according to a new comparison of two fruit fly species’ connectomes.

By @martajhill.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/connectome/c...

Well, none of us may ever get funded again but in the meantime, here's some new science!

Led by recent PhD Anjali Pandey w/ex-UG Maya Katz. Here we identify an asymmetric molecular mechanism that underlies symmetric context-dependent sensory plasticity in the AWC olfactory neuron pair in C. elegans

Ok, reinforcement learning fans: RL is great, but what do we do when there's no obvious reward from the environment? What about perfecting a golf swing or a foxtrot or a musical performance? We may have an answer. A tale of 🐦 🎶 + 🧠. 🧵1/ #bioacoustics #prattle 💬 #neuroai #compneuro

Brain endothelial gap junction coupling enables rapid vasodilation propagation during neurovascular coupling Vasodilatory signals are rapidly communicated across long distances by endothelial-endothelial gap junctions, enabling coordinated dilation of the arterial network during neurovascular coupling.

Very cool new paper by @thegulab.bsky.social published in Cell, showing that arterial endothelial coupling via gap junctions determines the speed and spread of vasodilation induced by neuronal activity ! #cerebrovascular #bloodflow #endothelium

Barcoded Rabies In Situ Connectomics for high-throughput reconstruction of neural circuits Sequencing of oligonucleotide barcodes holds promise as a high-throughput approach for reconstructing synaptic connectivity at scale. Rabies viruses can act as a vehicle for barcode transmission, than...

1/ Mapping synaptic connectivity between individual neurons is extremely laborious. We developed BRISC, a new method that makes it possible to map inputs onto 100s of neurons in the same animal in a matter of weeks! Led by Alex Becalick and @antblot.bsky.social. 🧵

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Highly sensitive science — Harvard Gazette Harvard neurobiologist David Ginty probes pleasure and pain to shed light on autism and other conditions.

This research has widespread implications for treatments of chronic pain, autistic hypersensitivity, sexual dysfunction, and other ailments.
@harvardmed.bsky.social

news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

What’s in a sniff? Wonderful new work from Kevin Franks revealing the mechanisms for responding to odour molecules at different stages of the respiration cycle. UK Semiochemical Network Workshop in Cambridge

Enhancer adoption by an LTR retrotransposon generates viral-like particles, causing developmental limb phenotypes - Nature Genetics Activation of an LTR retrotransposon inserted upstream of the Fgf8 gene produces viral-like particles in the mouse developing limb, triggering apoptosis and causing limb malformation. This phenotype c...

Finally out! 🥳 Our paper showing how a transposable element (TE) insertion can cause developmental phenotypes is now published @natgenet.nature.com 🧬🦠🐁
Below is a brief description of the major findings. Check the full version of the paper for more details: www.nature.com/articles/s41588-025-02248-5

Franklin W. Stahl, 95, Dies; Helped Create a ‘Beautiful’ DNA Experiment

Franklin W. Stahl, 95, Dies; Helped Create a ‘Beautiful’ DNA Experiment www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/s...

Solid phase transitions as a solution to the genome folding paradox - Nature In vitro reconstitution and in vivo live-cell imaging of LHX2–EBF1–LDB1 enhancer hubs in olfactory sensory neurons reveals that these transcription factors form condensates with solid, rathe...

Just noticed that Stavros has put out another 'solid' paper last month. 🔥 Impressive given what he has to deal with these days.

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

Event structure sculpts neural population dynamics in the lateral entorhinal cortex Our experience of the world is a continuous stream of events that must be segmented and organized at multiple timescales. The neural mechanisms underlying this process remain unknown. In this work, we...

Your brain doesn’t just passively track time ⏳ - it structures it.
In @Science.org we show that activity in 🧠 memory circuits (LEC) drifts constantly, but makes sharp jumps at key moments, segmenting life into meaningful events. (1/2)

👉 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Spatial learning circuitry fluctuates in step with estrous cycle in mice Cyclic shifts in estradiol levels coincide with changes in dendritic spine density and the activity of place cells in the CA1 region of the hippocampus, a new study shows.

Very happy to see a Transmitter (@thetransmitter.bsky.social) piece on our recent work on estrous cycle modulation of hippocampal structure and function. Thanks to Sydney Wyatt (@sydneywyatt.bsky.social) for covering the work and its context:

www.thetransmitter.org/neuroendocri...

my hope is that the uncharted territory part of this helps us - I mean if all that happens is that we get the right to win money in the future, that effectively strips funding for us for 3 years.

what is the ratio at columbia of terminated vs paused? here at HMS the vast majority of grants AFAIK (including my own) were terminated rather than paused, and we are wondering how this will play out eventually....

if you go right when it opens you can walk into Clamato, which is terrific. Le Chateaubriand is always solid. Bistrot Paul Bert for steak. I got norovirus at l'as du falafel - you've been warned!

thanks so much for having me! I had a wonderful time meeting the trainees and hearing about all the amazing science!

Decoding olfactory bulb output: A behavioral assessment of rate, synchrony, and respiratory phase coding Neurogenetics; Behavioral neuroscience; Sensory neuroscience

Animals’ sniffing drives rhythmic input to the olfactory system.

How does this timing contribute to perception, especially beyond first steps of olfactory processing?

We tested this using simple closed-loop optogenetics in our new paper: www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

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

How do brain circuits evolve? We started looking for some answers by using synapse-resolution cross-species comparative connectomics on an entire olfactory circuit 👇

bit.ly/44aVm9E

In vivo multiplex imaging of dynamic neurochemical networks with designed far-red dopamine sensors Dopamine (DA) plays a crucial role in a variety of brain functions through intricate interactions with other neuromodulators and intracellular signaling pathways. However, studying these complex netwo...

Excited to share our Science paper on HaloDA1.0-the first genetically encoded far-red dopamine sensor! 🥳It enables powerful multiplex imaging in neurons, brain slices, and live animals.🧠🔬 #GRABsensors #Dopamine www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Thanks so much for having me! It was wonderful to visit the NIH and to get a chance to hang out with the spectacular scientific community - really an honor!

1/ I'm excited to share recent results from my first collaboration with the amazing @anayebi.bsky.social
and @leokoz8.bsky.social !

We show how autonomous behavior and whole-brain dynamics emerge in embodied agents with intrinsic motivation driven by world models.

? is relevant to e.g., piriform, cerebellum, etc. side note - josie clowney at umich is doing amazing work using genetics to manipulate network params to play with the statistics of these randomly-generated odor-specific populations (representations?), and asking about consequences

Is the argument that because they are the product of random inputs they aren't actually "representations"? - here there is no multiplexing of signals (although individual neurons are tuned to multiple odors, populations are specific and unimodal), causality is clear, etc.

consider conventional kenyon cells - they get (approximately) random olfactory inputs, generate population level responses that are specific for odor, and those populations are causally used for odor learning and behavior downstream by explicit decoding circuits.