Bahl Lab

The Behavioural Neurobiology Summer School in Kosovo is back for the 2nd year and after just a few days we already made it onto live TV! For anyone who speaks Albanian, you can check out the full broadcast here: shorturl.at/kpUzp 🎙️

This work would not have been possible without the support of @uni-konstanz.de‬, @cbehav.bsky.social, @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social, @zukunftskolleg.bsky.social, @erc.europa.eu‬, @boehringerglobal.bsky.social, and @dfg.de. (10/10)

We suggest that zebrafish phototaxis is regulated via parallel processing streams, which could be a universal implementation to change strategies depending on developmental stage, context, or internal state, making behavior flexible and goal-oriented. (9/10)

Model-based extraction of latent cognitive variables points towards potential neural correlates of the observed behavioral inversion and illustrates a novel way to explore the mechanisms of vertebrate ontogeny. (8/10)

We ran simulations with virtual fish to test the model’s prediction for brightness navigation. Our model is able to qualitatively reproduce the behavior of the real fish. (7/10)

Using these pathways, we build a library of agent-based models to predict animal behavior across stimulation conditions and in more complex environments. (6/10)

We identify three parallel pathways: averaging whole-field luminance levels (A), comparing the contrast of light levels across eyes (C), and computing eye-specific temporal derivatives (D). (5/10)

Next, we quantified the turning behavior using a lateral brightness stimulus that is locked to the position of the fish. (4/10)

To test behavioral responses to whole-field brightness levels, we created a virtual circular gradient in which the brightness of the arena depends on the position of the fish. (3/10)

We apply a combination of modeling and complementary phototaxis assays in virtual reality to dissect the algorithmic basis of this transition. (2/10)

Larval zebrafish spend more time in the light, whereas juvenile zebrafish tend to approach darker regions. (1/10)

We are proud to have @maxcapelle.bsky.social's paper out on bioRxiv! He found that phototactic behavior in #zebrafish switches during #ontogeny🐟🔆 Through elegant behavioral dissections, he identifies the navigational strategies related to this transition. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Thread 👇

For the next few months, he will move next door to the @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social to work on animal tracking software, but we are looking forward to having him back in the lab to start his master's thesis at the end of the year!

Meet Max, a life science master's student at @uni-konstanz.de who joined our lab last year to work on ablating luminance change detecting cells in the larval zebrafish brain using 2P microscopy. His excellent work contributed to efforts in the lab to probe neural circuits underlying decision-making.

9A Spezial: Exzellent gefragt - How the Brain decides 9B · Episode

Curious how we study decision-making in the brain? PhD student Max Capelle talks about our research and methods in the @uni-konstanz.de student council podcast (in German): shorturl.at/4W6uF 🎙️

Check it out to learn more about how we combine 2P microscopy, behavioral experiments, and data analysis.

Sledding from the Bahl lab retreat into #NWG2025! Come check out our posters and talks over the next few days. See you there!

Such biophysically realistic network modeling provides the foundation for precise hypothesis-driven circuit manipulations, electrophysiology, and transcriptomic analysis in the future. So stay tuned😄(10/10)

Our anterior hindbrain circuit model, based on ground-truth connectivity, reproduces experimentally observed neural dynamics and predicts new mechanisms for flexible decision-making. (9/10)

Using 2P photo-activations and a ML classifier, we assigned functional labels to neurons based solely on morphology, enhancing our EM dataset. Our classifier also provides a basis to assign functional labels to other cell library resources for which calcium imaging had not been performed. (8/10)

After many months of intense tracing and synapse annotation, the result is a detailed connectome of functionally identified cells within the anterior hindbrain. (7/10)

We performed 2P calcium imaging to identify functional cell types related to this integration process. We then performed EM on the same preparation and mapped the two datasets together with cellular precision. Zetta AI has been instrumental in processing and segmenting the EM dataset. (6/10)

We use larval zebrafish, challenged with the classical random dot motion paradigm in which they need to accumulate motion evidence during sensory-motor decision-making. (image credit: Mariela Petkova) (5/10)

We are thankful to all the many many many other students and postdocs who helped with the experiments, imaging analysis, tracing, and database curation. (4/10)

The work has been a very productive collaboration between our lab, the Lichtman and Engert labs at Harvard University (connectomics), and the Baum lab at Zuse-Institut Berlin (Computer Science). (3/10)

In a heroic effort, the lead authors @boulangerweill.bsky.social and @flofightscience.bsky.social combined light and electron microscopy to address a long-standing question in neuroscience: What are the neural circuit mechanisms that allow animals to accumulate sensory evidence? (2/10)

Correlative light and electron microscopy reveals the fine circuit structure underlying evidence accumulation in larval zebrafish Accumulating information is a critical component of most circuit computations in the brain across species, yet its precise implementation at the synaptic level remains poorly understood. Dissecting su...

We are proud to present our new preprint “Correlative light and electron microscopy reveals the fine circuit structure underlying evidence accumulation in larval zebrafish”, just posted on bioRxiv (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...). (1/10)

Say hi to @nicobdgas.bsky.social! He successfully completed his bachelor’s thesis, working with @mehaj.bsky.social to standardize patch-clamping in the lab. He investigated spontaneous activity patterns in larval zebrafish Purkinje cells, which inspired him to continue his career in #Neuroscience.

Where's @zwitscherarmin.bsky.social ? Can you spot him? Ho Narro to all of the fantastic costumes on Fasnacht this year!

The best time of the year is here and we are already celebrating. Happy holidays from the Bahl Lab! 🥳

Happy to have hosted professor Florian Engert from @harvard.edu here at the @unikonstanz.bsky.social who shared his exciting work on analyzing heart rate and attention in larvae to gain new insights into decision-making behavior.