Takaki Komiyama

How a Tiny Brain Region Helps You Learn Complex Movements, One Neuron at a Time How a Tiny Brain Region Helps You Learn Complex Movements, One Neuron at a Time on Simons Foundation

A new @nature.com study from Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain investigator @takakikomiyama.bsky.social finds that as mice learn a complex movement, the pathway from the motor thalamus to the motor cortex rewires itself to drive the movement: www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/08/11/h... #science

Cholinergic feedback for modality- and context-specific modulation of sensory representations The brain’s ability to prioritize sensory information is crucial for adaptive behavior, yet its mechanisms remain unclear. We investigated basal forebrain cholinergic neurons modulating olfactory bulb...

Our new paper is out in Science.

We identified a subgroup of cholinergic neurons that mediate sensory modality-specific attention. They change their funcitonal properties within secs of behavioral context change.

Congrats to Bin for the great thesis, and the team!

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

Congrats Julie!!

In June 2001, I arrived in SFO with a suitcase, a student visa, and disproportionate dreams.

My life since has been nothing but a dream.

My heart is with the international students in the US today.

Thanks Jonathan!

Thank you!

Thank you!

Motor learning refines thalamic influence on motor cortex - Nature Imaging and optogenetics in mice provide insight into the interplay between the primary motor cortex and the motor thalamus during learning, showing that thalamic inputs have a key role in the executi...

Our paper is out in Nature.

By examining various inputs to the motor cortex during learning, we found that thalamic inputs learn to activate the cortical neurons encoding the movement being learned.

Tour de force by Assaf in collab with Felix and Marcus. Congrats!

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

Dendritic arbors structure memories Synapses on different dendritic domains store distinct types of information

A very thoughtful Perspective on our recent paper by Ayelén Groisman and Johannes Letzkus. Thank you!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Thank you Athena!

Thank you!

Distinct synaptic plasticity rules operate across dendritic compartments in vivo during learning Synaptic plasticity underlies learning by modifying specific synaptic inputs to reshape neural activity and behavior. However, the rules governing which synapses will undergo different forms of plasti...

Our new paper is out in Science.

What is the synaptic plasticity rule in the brain, we asked. It turns out there are multiple, even within individual neurons.

Congrats Jake!

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

Optogenetic restoration of neuron subtype-specific cortical activity ameliorates motor deficits in Huntington′s Disease mice Huntington′s disease (HD) is a devastating movement disorder without a current cure. Although the monogenic basis of HD is well-defined, the complex downstream effects that underlie behavioral symptom...

How do different cortical neuron types contribute to circuit dysfunction in #Huntington’s disease?

Check out our new collaborative study with @takakikomiyama.bsky.social, spearheaded by Sonja Blumenstock, now out as a preprint.

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

Optogenetic restoration of neuron subtype-specific cortical activity ameliorates motor deficits in Huntington′s Disease mice Huntington′s disease (HD) is a devastating movement disorder without a current cure. Although the monogenic basis of HD is well-defined, the complex downstream effects that underlie behavioral symptom...

Our new paper shows that targeted stimulation of a subtype of cortical inhibitory neurons can ameliorate motor deficits in Huntington’s disease mice. A great collab with @irinadudanova.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

It was a very long journey and they persisted with an unwavering determination. All while processing their own grief of losing a close friend. This is a victory for all of us.

I could not be more proud of the team led by Qiyu that went through her data file by file and scripts line by line to recover the data, confirmed her analysis, performed many new analyses, and repeated the experiments to reproduce the results.

Targeted stimulation of motor cortex neural ensembles drives learned movements During the execution of learned motor skills, the neural population in the layer 2/3 (L2/3) of the primary motor cortex (M1) expresses a reproducible spatiotemporal activity pattern. It is debated whe...

663 days since the senseless tragedy that took An, we present a manuscript that reports some of the discoveries that she left us.

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

Is there a known mechanism that silences and unsilences LTP?

Intermittent rate coding and cue-specific ensembles support working memory - Nature By recording large populations of neurons in behaving monkeys using newly developed silicon probes, we show that intermittent periods of memorandum-specific spiking coexist with synaptic mechanis...

IMO one of the most exciting studies I’ve seen recently. Trial-level unmasking of memory-specific functional connectivity

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

Bragging by quoting anonymous reviewer: "The paper is well written. The results are presented clearly and are interpreted directly and accurately. The introduction is excellent. ... I wish all papers read as nicely as this one."

Our new paper out in Science Advances. A population code in the retrosplenial cortex explains the discrepancy between animal behavior and standard RL models. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Meta-reinforcement learning via orbitofrontal cortex - Nature Neuroscience The authors show that neural activity and synaptic plasticity in the orbitofrontal cortex mediate multiple timescales of reinforcement learning (RL) for meta-RL, which parallels a form of meta-RL in a...

Our new paper out in @NatureNeuro. We uncovered the roles of orbitofrontal cortex in distinct aspects of meta-reinforcement learning. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

PSA to SfN attendees— the metro now goes between Dulles and downtown DC

Rewiring Dynamics of Functional Connectomes during Motor-Skill Learning The brain’s functional connectome continually rewires throughout an organism’s life. In this study, we sought to elucidate the operational principles of such rewiring in mouse primary motor cortex...

Our recent collab paper. Reanalysis of our previous data from a functional connectome perspective identified hub neurons that remain the center of functional reorganization during learning. Congrats Saber, Rudi et al.!
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Excited to be speaking at this SfN satellite meeting on Saturday evening
mbns.bruker.com/acton/fs/blo...

Wrote a little intro to the BICCN package that just dropped: www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Our recent collab paper-- an attempt at spike estimation from calcium imaging data with temporal superresolution (i.e. faster than the frame rate), congrats to Pulak and Piya: ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/doc...

Please smack me if I become a billionaire and start acting like Elon Musk.