sinan malik

Have you ever wondered how the brain should represent the sensory world in order to generate behavior? Read our new preprint: work by Shuhong Huang shuhonghuang.bsky.social with our long-standing collaborator James Fitzgerald at Northwestern.

“ok so this is embarrassing but just for the record and just so we have it, your C.V says "Nature Scientific Reports"? sorry to have to even ask”

😂

Excited to share our new preprint! We explore the link between the locus coeruleus (LC) and arousal for astrocytes, pyramidal cells, interneurons in the hippocampus. A fantastic collaboration with @sianduss.bsky.social @bohaceklab.bsky.social, and many others: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/5

Supplementary figure 16

fish remaps 180º visual space onto the full neural compass

Instead, fish seemed to remap 180º of the visual space onto the 360º extent of their neural compass, effectively "considering" the two suns as an identical object. This shows the surprising capacity of the HD cells to rapidly pick up the correlation structure of the visual inputs.

Astrocytes and neurons exhibit partially shared but distinct composite receptive fields for natural stimuli | Journal of Neurophysiology | American Physiological Society Astrocytes are increasingly recognized as active participants in sensory processing, but whether they show selective responses to stimulus features, analogous to neuronal receptive fields, is not yet ...

Lu, Schultz, Kozlov, Astrocytes and neurons exhibit partially shared but distinct composite receptive fields for natural stimuli
Now published in J Neurophys
journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Cool work!

In @elife.bsky.social: Pallium-encoded valence-specific chemosensory amplification of eye-body coordination in larval zebrafish doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

Plastic landmark anchoring in zebrafish compass neurons Nature - Using two-photon microscopy with a panoramic virtual reality setup, how head direction cells in larval zebrafish integrate visual landmarks and optic flow to track orientation is revealed.

1/6: New publication from the lab: “Plastic landmark anchoring in zebrafish compass neurons” by Ryosuke Tanaka (@ryosuketanaka.bsky.social) and Ruben is available here:
rdcu.be/eX1L4

Pattern of pyramidal neurons in brown and black with white lines

Okay, well, I painted some new neurons in burnt sienna and black #sciart

1/n: A new collaborative preprint from the lab to start the year: "A multi-ring shifter network computes head direction in zebrafish" together with Siyuan Mei, Martin Stemmler and Andreas Herz from the LMU, Munich.

Surprise mother$#@%er!

Q: What does this mean for neural systems to understand them?

A: We absolutely need the wiring diagram. All synapses, chemical and electrical.

#Connectomics

Leveraging insights from neuroscience to build adaptive artificial intelligence Nature Neuroscience - Adaptive intelligence envisions AI that, like animals, learns online, generalizes and adapts quickly. This Perspective reviews biological foundations, progress in AI and...

Interested in the latest advances in neuroscience (neural dynamics and internal models) and how they can be leveraged to build smarter, adaptive AI?

➡️ My first real solo piece 🖤🫶 @natneuro.nature.com

rdcu.be/eWVmA

How heterogeneity shapes dynamics and computation in the brain Much effort has been spent clustering neurons into transcriptomic or functional cell types and characterizing the differences between them. Beyond sub…

"My New Year's Resolution is to find a principled way to think about all those cell types in the brain"

Why friend, you are in luck, because @rgast.bsky.social has just the perspective for you: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Glutamate is the primary molecule that neurons use to communicate with each other.

Previously, scientists have mostly recorded when neurons fire output signals, but now with a new glutamate indicator, they can record the many inputs that causes cells to fire. 🧵

#neuroskyence

I don't always get pretty, isolated, AND transfected primary neurons in culture, but when I do I take advantage.... Rat hippocampal neuron overexpressing ThymosinB4-mScarlet and imaged for 16hr on a @zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social LSM880 with Airyscan. #FluorescenceFriday #Microscopy

Merry Christmas, Hanukkah, et al.

Really enjoyed highlighting this work by @vmsruetten.bsky.social from @mishaahrens.bsky.social lab for preLights. WHOLISTIC! A whole-body functional atlas of cellular dynamics. Lots of cool things in the preprint.
@hhmijanelia.bsky.social @prelights.bsky.social

Spatial and morphological organization of mitochondria in neurons across a connectome Neuronal function depends on mitochondria, but little is known about their organization across neurons. Using an electron microscopy Drosophila connectome, we uncovered quantitative rules governing th...

A paper from my PhD lab is on Science! This is a really cool new way to utilize EM connectome datasets. Congrats to the team!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Q & A Interview with Julie Semmelhack, who studies the neural circuits of visual behavior at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Check out our newest issue where we interview @juliesemmelhack.bsky.social, who studies the neural circuits of visual behavior at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Optogenetic interrogation of the zebrafish lateral line reveals brain-wide neural circuits involved in pattern separation Zoology; Neuroscience; Sensory neuroscience

It's finally out! Our paper on optogenetic interrogation of the lateral line: www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
This one involved a lot of sweat and tears, and it was a real tour de force. It was also the last paper we got to write with Jim, so it's a special one (and hence, the tears).

The fun leaving your body the moment you're done with the science and it's time to get it published

Congrats @hannazwaka.bsky.social 🎉

We are very excited: @hannazwaka.bsky.social has been awarded a Leibniz Best Minds grant as a Junior Research Group Leader! Five years of independent research, tenure track and part of the Best Minds network – a real boost for her career.

cool work! @hlavian.bsky.social

Hunger shapes predator avoidance behaviour in zebrafish All organisms, including humans, engage in behavioral choices and complex decision-making processes, which are crucial for survival. The mechanisms underlying behavioral choices require the acquisi...

You're not you when you're hungry... and neither is a zebrafish!

Our new paper shows that hunger completely overrides the instinct to flee, making zebrafish approach potential threats instead. "Hunger shapes predator avoidance in zebrafish." @zebrafishrock.bsky.social 🐟

doi.org/10.1080/0394...

Scene from OFFICE SPACE with Michael Bolton replying to Samir Nagheenanajar: “No way. Why should I change? He's the one who sucks.”

when someone tells me not to use em dashes because AI uses em dashes

Visual motion and landmark position align with heading direction in the zebrafish interpeduncular nucleus - Nature Communications How are various visual signals integrated in the vertebrate brain for navigation? Here authors show that different spatial signals are topographically organized and align to one another in the zebrafi...

(1/n) We are excited to share our new paper in Nature Communications, by Hagar Lavian (@hlavian.bsky.social) and team, revealing how the zebrafish brain integrates visual navigation signals! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Lighting and circadian cues shape locomotor strategies for balance and navigation in larval zebrafish Most fish are inherently unstable and must swim to stabilize posture. How diurnal fish reduce activity at night while maintaining postural control remains unclear. We defined distinct locomotor strate...

Like most animals, fish move less at night. Underwater, stable posture requires movement. Find out how fish don't fall down at night in: Lighting and circadian cues shape locomotor strategies for balance and navigation in larval zebrafish from @yunluzhu.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1101/2025...