Raunak Basu

Flexible perceptual encoding by discrete gamma events - Nature Using a new analytical method for tracking gamma band events in mouse visual cortex, flexible encoding of visual information according to behavioural context is shown.

Flexible perceptual encoding by discrete gamma events
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience

Neural coding of choice and outcome are modulated by uncertainty in orbitofrontal but not secondary motor cortex - Nature Communications Neural mechanisms underlying flexible learning and decision-making are not fully understood. Using single-cell calcium imaging, authors here found that neurons in orbitofrontal and secondary motor cortex exhibit complementary roles in reward learning, with neurons in the former exerting a sustained role in conditions of uncertainty.

🎇 Excited to finally share JL Romero Sosa’s publication! Results are from single-cell imaging in different subregions of rat frontal cortex during ✨de novo learning. Spoiler: everything is not everywhere all at once www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This project has been in the making for over half a decade and has been an active collaboration with the amazing Hiroshi Ito. Also, a big shout-out to my co-authors, Marjan Mozaffarilegha, Ipek Bölükbaşı, and Cansu Üstüner - without whom this work wouldn't have been possible.

And finally, the formation of this OFC spatial map doesn't require the hippocampus or the medial entorhinal cortex, making it an independent spatial mapping system in the brain.

The most remarkable feature of this map is that it remains largely stable when the spatial context is changed (such as changing the experimental room or the shape of the arena), rendering it a schematic map of space.

The orbitofrontal cortex forms a context-generalized spatial schema that preserves topology and distance Flexible and efficient navigation requires the brain to construct maps that are both topological, preserving the relationships between locations, and schematic, enabling generalization across environm...

Ever wonder if there are spatial maps in the brain outside the hippocampal-entorhinal regions? In this preprint, we describe a novel spatial map in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) that preserves the topological arrangements and distance between locations. However, ...

www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Functional independence of entorhinal grid cell modules enables remapping in hippocampal place cells A systems-level understanding of cortical computation requires insight into how neural codes are transformed across distinct brain circuits. In the mammalian cortex, one of the few systems where such ...

1/5 How does the brain turn the low-dimensional, universal grid cell metric into the rich, diverse codes needed for memory in hippocampal place cells? 🧵
Preprint link 👇

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

Evidence for an active handoff between hemispheres during target tracking The brain has somewhat separate cognitive resources for the left and right sides of our visual field. Despite this lateralization, we have a smooth and unified perception of our environment. This rais...

New paper!
Evidence for an active handoff between hemispheres during target tracking
www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...
#neuroscience

What happens in your brain when you make up your mind?

Postdoc (soon faculty at U. of Utah) @thomas-zhihao-luo.bsky.social and ex-grad student (now Shanahan Fellow at Allen Institute) @timkimd.bsky.social have some answers in this new paper out in Nature!

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

🧵 1/6

Recurrent pattern completion drives the neocortical representation of sensory inference - Nature Neuroscience Neurons that respond emergently to illusory contours drive pattern completion in V1. Pattern completion in lower cortical areas may therefore mediate perceptual inference by selectively reinforcing ac...

Neurons in mouse primary visual cortex that respond emergently to illusory contours drive pattern completion

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

Multisensory coding of self-motion and its contribution to navigation - Nature Reviews Neuroscience As an animal moves within its environment, self-motion signals are generated by the inner ear vestibular organs and the retina and transmitted to the CNS. In this Review, Mao and Gu describe how these...

Multisensory coding of self-motion and its contribution to navigation — a Review by Dun Mao & Yong Gu

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

#neuroscience #neuroskyence

Thrilled to share that our work is now published in Science! ✨

We found a preference for visual objects in the mouse spatial navigation system where they dynamically refine head-direction coding. In short, objects boost our inner compass! 🧭

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

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Motor cortex flexibly deploys a high-dimensional repertoire of subskills Skilled movement often requires flexibly combining multiple subskills, each requiring dedicated control strategies and underlying computations. How the motor system achieves such versatility remains u...

Of potential interest to those keen on motor control and/or multi-task networks. Congrats to Elom and Eric.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Brain-wide coordination of decision formation and commitment Neural correlates of a subject’s upcoming choice in decision making tasks are remarkably widespread throughout the brain, but how these brain-wide signals are coordinated remains unknown. Do brain reg...

Complementary approach: simultaneous recordings allow analyses to see who leads and who lags. Among other results stemming from simultaneous recordings, in this preprint we show that during decision-making, frontal cortices and striatum lead, other regions lag.

doi.org/10.1101/2024...

A brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour - Nature The International Brain Laboratory presents a brain-wide electrophysiological map obtained from pooling data from 12 laboratories that performed the same standardized perceptual decision-making task i...

The two key studies of the International Brain Laboratory @intlbrainlab.bsky.social are out today!

A brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Brain-wide representations of prior information in mouse decision-making
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Rate and noise in human amygdala drive increased exploration in aversive learning - Nature Human exploration is driven by two distinct neural mechanisms, a valence-independent rate signal and a valence-dependent global noise signal.

Nature research paper: Rate and noise in human amygdala drive increased exploration in aversive learning

go.nature.com/41rFGxa

Now out in @natneuro.nature.com

What happens to the brain’s body map when a body-part is removed?

Scanning patients before and up to 5 yrs after arm amputation, we discovered the brain’s body map is strikingly preserved despite amputation

www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-02037-7

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I'm more than psyched to share that my PhD paper is now out in Neuron! It's also my first paper as both first author and corresponding author, which means even more to me!

Thank my partner Chi-Chieh for her contribution to the most adorable ever graphic abstract 🥰

Inner speech in motor cortex and implications for speech neuroprostheses Inner speech is robustly represented in the motor cortex and can be decoded in real time to restore communication to people with paralysis. Unintentional decoding of private inner speech can be preven...

"Using multi-unit recording we found that inner speech is robustly represented in motor cortex, & decoded imagined sentences in real time. We demonstrate strategies to prevent brain-computer interfaces from unintentionally decoding private inner speech." Fascinating new @cp-cell.bsky.social paper:👇🧪

The cost of remembering: engram competition as a flexible mechanism of forgetting The retention and use of long-term memories is crucial for adaptive behavior. While stable memories help organisms anticipate outcomes, they may become maladaptive if not updated to reflect new condit...

The cost of remembering: engram competition as a flexible mechanism of forgetting.

Our new perspective piece in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social, lead by Ryan Lab alumni, Livia Autore. Also with Michael Drew from @utaustin.bsky.social

Trends in Neurosciences www.cell.com/trends/neuro...

The challenge of defining a neural population Our current approach is largely arbitrary. We need new methods for grouping cells, ideally by their dynamics.

My latest column for @thetransmitter.bsky.social - why neural populations are a convenient fiction

doi.org/10.53053/FZK...

Auditory object representation in the bat hippocampus Cognitive maps enable the flexible selection of navigation paths. Acoustic cognitive maps, constructed from the spatial layout of sonar auditory objec…

We know how visual objects influence spatial tuning in the hippocampus. A new study from @batwoman123.bsky.social shows that auditory objects can be egocentrically or allocentrically encoded in the hippocampus of echolocating bats 🦇.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
@currentbiology.bsky.social

Differential kinematic coding in sensorimotor striatum across behavioral domains reflects different contributions to movement - Nature Neuroscience Hardcastle and Marshall et al. show that striatal function is domain specific, required for task-related but not spontaneously expressed movements. This functional distinction is reflected in starkly ...

Excited to announce that my first postdoc paper is now online!

Links:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
rdcu.be/eAcN7

In it, we examine the perennial question: what changes in the brain when learning a new motor skill?

Read more below to find out 👇

Orbitofrontal cortex computes gaze-dependent comparisons between attributes rather than integrated values When choosing between options with multiple attributes, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is thought to integrate across those attributes, aiding in value comparisons. This study shows in monkeys that OF...

Happy to have some good science news - our new study with @aqperkins.bsky.social is out in @plosbiology.org!

dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

A neural manifold view of the brain - Nature Neuroscience Recent advances in neuroscience have revealed how neural population activity underlying behavior can be well described by topological objects called neural manifolds. Understanding how nature, nurture...

New review on neural manifold and population activity in the brain-
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hippocampal representations drift in stable multisensory environments - Nature Tracking of individual place cells in mouse CA1 shows that representational drift is not influenced by changes in environment or behaviour, and is lower for more excitable place cells.

I’m excited to share my final co-first author paper from my postdoc in Dan Dombeck's lab!

We explored how behavior, senses, and neurons influence how much information in the brain changes over time.

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

#science #research #neuroscience #hippocampus #placecells

Congrats Katja!! looks amazing

🚨Very happy that my PhD work is now out in @nature.com!

We discovered that evolution, by acting in the midbrain, shifted the threshold to escape in Peromyscus mice, to fine-tune defensive strategies in different environments

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

This was a truly collaborative effort! 🧵⬇️

Discovering cognitive strategies with tiny recurrent neural networks - Nature Modelling biological decision-making with tiny recurrent neural networks enables more accurate predictions of animal choices than classical cognitive models and offers insights into the underlying cog...

Thrilled to see our TinyRNN paper in @nature! We show how tiny RNNs predict choices of individual subjects accurately while staying fully interpretable. This approach can transform how we model cognitive processes in both healthy and disordered decisions. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Abstract rule learning promotes cognitive flexibility in complex environments across species - Nature Communications Whether neurocomputational mechanisms that speed up human learning in changing environments also exist in other species remains unclear. Here, the authors show that both rats and humans sequentially t...

Abstract rule learning promotes cognitive flexibility in complex environments across species
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience