Yoav Livneh

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.

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

📅 Next week, we are excited to welcome Dr. @yoavlivneh.bsky.social from Weizmann Institute of Science. He will share his research on the #insular #cortex.

🥳 As always, everyone is welcome to join us at our Institute, and registration is not necessary! All info here: www.psych.mpg.de/events/40140...

Expectation-driven sensory adaptations support enhanced acuity during categorical perception - Nature Neuroscience Bayesian models explain how context biases perceptual behavior toward expected categories, but sensory neurons do not reflect this bias. Instead, expectation sharpens sensory acuity, independent of do...

Our brains use prediction in two seemingly contradictory ways. Our latest paper, just published in @natureneuro.bsky.social, investigates how we do it. 1/n

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

Interpreting every comment as positive feedback

I am incredibly proud to share my first, first-author paper as a postdoc with @benhayden.bsky.social . How does the human hippocampus, known for encoding concepts, represent the meanings of words while listening to narrative speech?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Brain-wide presynaptic networks of functionally distinct cortical neurons - Nature Behavioural-state-dependent pyramidal neurons have a distinct pattern of long-range glutamatergic inputs, with a larger proportion of thalamic versus motor cortex inputs compared with non-behavio...

www.nature.com/articles/s41... awesome new work out today! From the Lee lab in the intramural research program at NIMH!

Our paper @dulaclab.bsky.social on social homeostasis is online today! We characterized “social rebound” behavior after social isolation in multiple mouse strains and revealed its neural basis. Intriguingly, soft touch plays a key role in satisfying social need!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In our new preprint, we show that microglia can prune astrocyte processes to regulate synaptic transmission and hypothalamic neuron activity. This work represents a huge team effort spanning ~10 years, and we are very excited to finally share it with the world!

A dual-pathway architecture for stress to disrupt agency and promote habit - Nature Adaptive decision-making often requires an understanding of our agency in a situation; however, chronic stress can disrupt agency and promote inflexible, habitual behaviour by turning off a brain path...

🚨📃New Wassum Lab Paper📃🚨

Out today, @jackiegio.bsky.social discovered brain pathways that support agency and habit and how chronic stress disrupts them to rob of us our agency and cause us to form rigid habits 🧵👇

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

Free full text: rdcu.be/eaxEv

2024 marked the 10-year anniversary of the FENS-Kavli Network of Excellence. We warmly invite you to explore the 10-Year Report, showcasing its impact on science, mentoring, outreach, advocacy, and personal achievements. @fens.org @kavlifoundation.bsky.social fenskavlinetwork.org/fkne-10-year...

Check out these exciting findings! So happy that we could contribute to this fantastic story!

Cortical control of innate behavior from subcortical demonstration Motor control in mammals is traditionally viewed as a hierarchy of descending spinal-targeting pathways, with frontal cortex at the top. Many redundant muscle patterns can solve a given task, and this...

(1/11) Today I preprinted a lot of work from my postdoc with @dudman.bsky.social, which started with a question of how the nervous system balances flexibility with efficiency of learning. The thread below gives some background....
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

To the tune 🎶 of Murder on the Dancefloor 🕺:

Chaos in the Brickyard www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... - we're so busy making bricks, we forgot to assemble them into useful edifices, and now all the loose bricks are in the way!

Excited to share our new paper in Nature! 'Transcriptomic neuron types vary topographically in function and morphology' explores how neurons in the zebrafish optic tectum exhibit diverse functions and shapes despite similar transcriptional profiles.

🔗 rdcu.be/d9GVM

Why Causal Knowledge Is Pragmatically Possible: Bridging Philosophical Skepticism and Scientific… When we observe the world, we note that events consistently follow one another. As David Hume famously argued in An Enquiry Concerning…

Great article by @kordinglab.bsky.social‬ on "why causal knowledge is pragmatically possible".

The best arguments for causation--& only one we need--is pragmatic. Here pragmatic isn't weak/subjective, but connected to actual goals, utility & outcomes in the world.

medium.com/@kording/why...

Perception and neural representation of intermittent odor stimuli in mice Odor cues in nature are sparse and highly fluctuating due to turbulent transport. To investigate how animals perceive these intermittent cues, we developed a behavioral task in which head-restrained m...

Yes, many worrying things happening in science that should take priority in grabbing our attention - but we are worried precisely because scientific knowledge is worth creating. In that spirit, I am proud to highlight our latest @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint! #neuroscience 🧪

Innovative flavoring behavior in Goffin’s cockatoos Reports on food preparation in non-human animals are rare and often anecdotal. Zewald and Auersperg investigate Goffin’s cockatoos flavoring their food by dunking it in soy yogurt while excluding alte...

Innovative flavoring behavior in cockatoos!

www.cell.com/current-biol...

How exercise during pregnancy can improve metabolic health of offspring: a key mediator (Serpina3c) from mother's white adipose tissue gets into fetal circulation, suppresses inflammation, as demonstrated in the mouse model
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
www.nature.com/articles/s42...

𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗹𝗮 𝗰𝗶𝗿𝗰𝘂𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗶𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗶𝘀
The insula is the place of magic in the brain... (one of them at least)
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
(h/t @jrbneuropsiq.bsky.social )
#neuroskyence

Contextual cues facilitate dynamic value encoding in the mesolimbic dopamine system Fraser et al. demonstrate that contexts engage a model-based process that allows for rapid revaluation of reward-paired cues. They find that dopamine neuron activity is necessary for contexts to updat...

New paper out in @currentbiology.bsky.social with the inestimable @kurtfraser.bsky.social and @janaklab.bsky.social. We think this work illuminates an important way the brain dynamically orchestrates motivation, and look forward to testing new hypotheses this inspires in disease models.

I’m thrilled to share our preprint presenting MORSE: a new way to simultaneously & quantitatively track patterns of neuromodulators/neuropeptides in vitro & in vivo using spatially multiplexed 3D imaging of 10+ green optical sensors on a microendoscope
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.26.634931v1

Coming from an electrophys systems neuroscience background, it took me a long time to appreciate the importance of cell types in the brain. What's your favorite example where granular cell types (i.e. more than just E/I or subtypes of I cells) matter for systems neuro? Could be a fun substack post!

AgRP "hunger neurons" in the hypothalamus. They integrate signals of energy deficit and drive activity patterns in >10 downstream brain regions to create motivation specifically for food (aka hunger). They are anatomically intermingled with different cell types for other things like reproduction

Interested in understanding how things work? In particular the tools you use to study the brain? Join us at TENSS 2025 where we brainstorm ideas, build and debug microscopes, electrophysiology and behavior rigs amidst the picturesque Transylvanian hills! tenss.ro
Apply by: February 16th!

Free fatty acid receptor 4 modulates dietary sugar preference via the gut microbiota - Nature Microbiology Bacteroides vulgatus, a gut bacterium, promotes GLP-1 secretion through its metabolite, pantothenate, inhibiting sugar preference in mice.

A gut bacterium behind sugar preference

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

Schemas, reinforcement learning and the medial prefrontal cortex - Nature Reviews Neuroscience A computational account of how schemas are learned through experience is lacking. In this Perspective, Bein and Niv synthesize schema theory and reinforcement learning research to derive computational...

Excited to share this perspective with @yaelniv.bsky.social about how schemas might be learned and instantiated via reinforcement learning, latent cause inference, and dimensionality reduction, and what's the medial prefrontal cortex might be doing for all of these www.nature.com/articles/s41...

GLP-1 and the Neurobiology of Eating Control: Recent Advances Abstract. Obesity is now considered a chronic relapsing progressive disease, associated with increased all-cause mortality that scales with body weight, af

Really proud to start the year by sharing our new review in @endosocjournals.bsky.social on the roles of GLP-1 in eating and obesity treatment, led by superstar postdoc @laurenjonesucl.bsky.social!

academic.oup.com/endo/article...

🧪🧠📈 #neuroscience #neuroskyence #GLP-1 #obesity #wegovy #ozempic

Beautiful work! Congrats Sonu, Meital and team!

An exciting approach to the "everything is everywhere(?)" discussion!

Honored to be a part of this wonderful group of scientists!