Ariel Levine

Want to come do a postdoc with us?

We’re interested in how sensorimotor function is carried out by the cells and circuits of the spinal cord. We have an awesome team, lots of cool techniques, and we’re open to new ideas/approaches/connections. Get in touch!

I’m recruiting new members to the Farrell Lab this summer. We will have space for 1 postdoc (since Abhinav is leaving to start his own lab at U Arizona!!) and 2 postbacs, since my current two will leave for PhD programs at the end of the summer. More details in thread:

Our latest: A gene selection method for single-cell RNA-seq that identifies developmental & spatial patterns missed by other analysis pipelines

ESFS: A Noise-Resilient Framework for Feature Selection and Marker Gene Discovery in Single-Cell Transcriptomics | bioRxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Thank you, Remi!

Thank you 😊

Defending PhD student, looking over their thesis: “If I knew then what I know now, I could’ve done all of this in like 9 months.”

A thread about my favorite pioneering cave explorers and why I don’t think AI will ever “solve” biology.

I am very happy (and a bit scared) to present to you what we have been working on over the last 4 years. This manuscript is exactly what I dreamt of when I started the lab and I could not be happier and prouder of the outcome!

Thanks, Rune!

Thank you :)

Thank you, Helen!

Thank you!

Thank you, Andreas!

Ontogeny of the spinal cord dorsal horn The dorsal horn of the mammalian spinal cord is organized into laminae where each layer is populated by different neuron types, has distinctive circuit connections, and plays specialized roles in beha...

Excited to share @rbrianroome.bsky.social ‘s beautiful paper on development of the dorsal horn of the mouse spinal cord @science.org

This is how the anatomical organization and cell types that process pain, touch, body position and more are laid down.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Of course! It’s the reading room in the original Shakespeare and co bookstore in Paris. And yes, it is magical

A corner of a laptop screen in a room filled with old books and comfy well-worn furniture - Shakespeare and Co bookstore in Paris

Welp, this has been a tough year, but finishing it up working on a paper I’m *very* excited about, in a place like this… that’s really nice

Congratulations!!

Join us for Fall 2026. In our group, you can run studies from human behavior and neuroimaging, to large-scale NHP ephys, and join them up with a robust computational foundation. Bonus: you can help build the reading list.

First paper from the lab is now online
@natneuro.nature.com !
We mapped injury induced enhancers in the mouse CNS and decoded their sequence architecture. Little 🧵 rdcu.be/eSQi1

Hello 🇫🇷

I’ll be doing a mini-sabbatical in the lab of the amazing @clairewyart.bsky.social at the ICM in Paris. If you study motor control, spinal cord biology, evo/devo of behavior, let me know if you’d like to connect!

Oh yeah. In the lab, we’ve discussed every common definition because we study gap crossing jumps and the propulsive phase is likely the closest. I believe in frogs it is truly ballistic but mammals can tune it a bit

Yep, I’ve actually discussed it with him and stick by my argument that this would work great for some types of motor control but there are clearly ancient/core movements that this doesn’t explain well

Totally agree. As you know, I favor thinking of motor control principles varying depending on behavior and animal.

Actually, to take inspiration from Mark Latash, his translation of Bernstein’s book is one of my favorite descriptions of how this could all work together

Yep ;)

Omg, multi-particular muscles are so interesting

Doesn’t his model requires lots of feedback? Could be all different varieties

But this is very different, no? Doesn’t he propose that the final limb location/configuration is the control parameter? This may be true for some movements (eg visually guided forelimb) but I doubt it is right for others (eg ballistic hindlimb)

So I think of the low-d part as a control bottleneck point?

For example, we can elicit a multi-joint flexion synergy by stimulating some spinal neurons and that works regardless of limb starting position

Ah, I understand. But I think the stimulation studies that evoke synergies are a better case here than the ones that observe movements or EMG and do dimensionality reduction.

Can you expand on this one too, Andrew? Curious about your thoughts on it