Brad Hulse

YouTube video by Weizmann Institute of Science Bat Island: The New Era of Science

Neuroscience projects last several years, and you are usually a bit jaded by the time you wrap it up. Not this one– spending several months on an island in the middle of nowhere, away from all the craziness of the world reminds you how beautiful the world really is.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=46sv...

The postsubiculum as a head-direction cortex The organisation of thalamocortical networks follows a conserved structure. Traditionally, these are divided into primary sensory systems that receive…

Really excited to share this Opinion piece we've been working on with fellow head-direction cell geeks @apeyrache.bsky.social @desdemonafricker.bsky.social and (bsky-less?) Andrea Burgalossi! While head-direction cells pop up in many cortical regions, we think that one of them is quite unique (1/8)

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Excited to share our new #biorxivpreprint:
“Sexual dimorphism in the complete connectome of the Drosophila male central nervous system” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We describe the #connectomics reconstruction and analysis of an entire adult #maleCNS #drosophila central nervous system. 1/10

🧠 A new wiring diagram of the 166,000+ neurons in the brain & nerve cord of a male fruit fly is a key tool in uncovering how the brain enables complex behavior—information that could ultimately help scientists better understand what causes different diseases ➡️ https://hhmi.news/4o3EJnk

Male CNS Connectome A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system —a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the ...

We're very proud to be releasing the complete male fly CNS connectome!

It's the product of a huge team effort here at Janelia in partnership with the Cambridge Fly Connectomics group (@jefferis.bsky.social and colleagues), plus invaluable collaborators.

More soon...
www.janelia.org/project-team...

Male CNS Connectome A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system —a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the ...

Exciting news for #drosophila #connectomics and #neuroscience enthusiasts: the Drosophila male central nervous system connectome is now live for exploration. Find out more at the landing page hosted by our Janelia FlyEM collaborators www.janelia.org/project-team....

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How can the brain create countless unique memories using a single, universal metric of space? We’ve been waiting for the answer to this for two decades!
Read it here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I’m super excited to finally put my recent work with @behrenstimb.bsky.social on bioRxiv, where we develop a new mechanistic theory of how PFC structures adaptive behaviour using attractor dynamics in space and time!

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

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New from @katejj.bsky.social group!

Finally preprinted! TL;DR: thalamic head-direction neurons can shape their activity regardless of input. Big thanks to @apeyrache.bsky.social and master experimentalist @sskromne.bsky.social .

Coherent dynamics of thalamic head-direction neurons irrespective of input While the thalamus is known to relay and modulate sensory signals to the cortex, whether it also participates in active computation and intrinsic signal generation remains unresolved. The anterodorsal...

🚨New preprint alert!

The thalamus has long been seen as a relay of sensory signals to cortex.
But could it also generate its own structured activity?
Our study explores this question in the head-direction (HD) system.

Some explanation 🧵👇 1/13

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

Granularity of thalamic head direction cells Head direction signaling is fundamental for spatial orientation and navigation. The anterodorsal nucleus of the thalamus (ADn) contains a high density of head direction (HD) cells that process sensori...

*New preprint from the lab* – “Granularity of thalamic head direction cells”
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
🧠📈 🧪
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Thanks Misha for the shout-out!
It has been a truly mind-opening journey. WHOLISTIC is one step towards whole-organism neuroscience and a true physiological observatory - with extensions on the way! I am continually amazed by what the data reveals - so much remains to be discovered and mined.

Preprint -
Excited to present WHOLISTIC, which extends the concept of whole-brain functional imaging to the entire body. Pioneering work by incredibly talented Virginia Ruetten @vmsruetten.bsky.social, this platform reveals whole-organism cellular dynamics in vivo.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I am very thankful for the support from the Department of Biological Sciences and Dartmouth @dartmouthartsci.bsky.social for supporting my interdisciplinary research vision! We are recruiting Post Docs and Grad Students to join this exciting endeavor!

📢We're #hiring Group Leaders!

Apply to lead a lab at Janelia & advance biology using theory, computational modeling & machine learning.

🔹5-year renewable appointment
🔹Pioneer new tools & approaches
🔹Collaborate across disciplines

Apply by Nov. 4👉 https://janelia.link/groupleader

Tonic dopamine and biases in value learning linked through a biologically inspired reinforcement learning model Nature Communications - Accurate future predictions are essential for guiding behavior, and disruptions in this process are associated with psychiatric disorders. Here the authors show that changes...

My first paper with @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social is finally out in @natcomms.nature.com ! rdcu.be/eACGf

TL;DR: asymmetric learning rates can be induced by shifts in tonic dopamine giving rise to pessimistic/optimistic biases in agents or animals undergoing reinforcement learning .

How is the nervous system organized to coordinate behavior? To approach this massive question, a team led by @asbates.bsky.social, @jasper-tms.bsky.social, @mindyisminsu.bsky.social, & Helen Yang present the BANC: a Brain and Nerve Cord connectome.

Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🧪#Neuroskyence

New preprint from Yipei Guo and Ann Hermundstad (@hhmijanelia.bsky.social) - a wonderfully in-depth investigation into environmental variability and optimal behavioural strategies.

🪰 A new ‘Eyemap’ developed by a team led by Arthur Zhao & @michaelreiser.bsky.social reveals how visual information detected by the fly’s eye shows up in neurons deep in the brain. Remarkably, the eye’s shape determines how flies see motion.👁️
🔗 hhmi.news/4kSZjou

What does a neural network look like? Maybe like this view of Larissa Heinrich's U-net for organelle segmentation, with edges between layer inputs and outputs.

Want to help build networks like this? Join #HHMIJanelia's new AI initiative as a data engineer:
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Research Specialist - Tavakoli Lab Primary Work Address: 19700 Helix Drive, Ashburn, VA, 20147 Current HHMI Employees, click here to apply via your Workday account. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus is a pio...

🧠 Excited by synapse-level brain mapping? Join us at a world-class institute to build molecular tools based on our new #LICONN work — and push the frontier of #MolecularConnectomics. Let’s decode the brain, one synapse at a time.

hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Super excited to announce a follow-up to the Janelia 'mechanistic basis of foraging' conference - this time held in Birmingham, UK! Join us from the 3rd - 5th November to discuss all things foraging: uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...

Our new paper out now in Science explores how neural activity in the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) *drifts* over time - and *jumps* at key boundaries - to help organize events in memory.

🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Here's a quick summary of what we found 🧵👇

Out today in @nature.com: we show that individual neurons have diverse tuning to a decision variable computed by the entire population, revealing a unifying geometric principle for the encoding of sensory and dynamic cognitive variables.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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How do neural dynamics in motor cortex interact with those in subcortical networks to flexibly control movement? I’m beyond thrilled to share our work on this problem, led by Eric Kirk @eric-kirk.bsky.social with help from Kangjia Cai!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Two sets of connecting fly neurons with fine, wispy arbors.

Cleaning up disk space, I found this image I made for someone not long after the release of the #HHMIJanelia #Drosophila hemibrain #connectome in 2020. It shows EPG neurons in pink providing inputs to PFL1 neurons in transparent grey. I'm not sure if the image was ever used.

A flexible hippocampal population code for experience relative to reward - Nature Neuroscience Sosa et al. find that hippocampal neural activity in mice encodes both environmental location and experience relative to rewards, spanning distances far from reward, through parallel and flexible popu...

It's officially published!! In my main postdoc work with @markplitt.bsky.social and @lgiocomo.bsky.social, we found that the hippocampus simultaneously encodes an animal's spatial position and its experience relative to reward in parallel population codes. 🧵

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