Another fun lab retreat with this amazing group of people! This year we went to Isle of Wight and spent 2 days over bbq, pub quiz, board games, and more science. My favorite part is that we paired people from different projects together and had idea smash up sessions. Highly recommend!

We are looking for two Research Assistants to conduct experiments and data analyses investigating the neural mechanisms of strategic and social decision-making using head-fixed (1) and freely-moving (1) behavioural paradigms in mice. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

UCL – University College London

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

ucl.ac.uk

We’re hiring a Group Leader! Join us to lead a transformative initiative in human systems neuroscience. Find out more and apply ⤵️ www.sainsburywellcome.org/content/curr...

Let's talk about "grumpy lab person". Many labs have them. With an eye to keeping science at its most rigorous, they cross the line into criticism that's too harsh. They are the ones who risk killing your scientific spirit. They are reviewer 2. /1

Bichan Wu (@bichanw.bsky.social) & I wrote a tutorial paper on Reduced Rank Regression (RRR) — the statistical method underlying "communication subspaces" from Semedo et al 2019 — aimed at neuroscientists. arxiv.org/abs/2512.12467

Reduced rank regression for neural communication: a tutorial for neuroscientists

Reduced rank regression (RRR) is a statistical method for finding a low-dimensional linear mapping between a set of high-dimensional inputs and outputs. In recent years, RRR has found numerous applica...

arxiv.org

Happy holidays from the Duan Lab! We celebrated with some delicious and spicy Thai food :)

New ms on trinary choices! Somewhat surprisingly, our monkeys’ choices satisfied IIA (independence of irrelevant alternatives). In OFC, decision variables were represented in the same way under trinary and under binary choices. This property implies IIA. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Neuronal Activity in Orbitofrontal Cortex during Trinary Choices under Risk

Economic choice entails computing and comparing the subjective values of different goods. Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is thought to contribute to both operations. However, previous work focused almost ...

biorxiv.org

New preprint from the lab! A frontal motor circuit for economic decisions and actions: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We use a novel task in mice, cortex-wide imaging and optogenetics, NPX recording and modelling to reveal a circuit mechanism that transforms abstract decisions to spatial actions.

A frontal motor circuit for economic decisions and actions

Flexible behaviour requires transforming abstract cognitive representations, such as value preferences, into concrete motor actions. During economic decision-making, individuals evaluate options to gu...

biorxiv.org

Great news! Reasonable policy updates from #ERC erc.europa.eu/news-events/...

Changes to the 2026 and 2027 Work Programmes

With the launch of the competitions for grants under ERC Work Programme 2026 in July of this year, several changes to the submission of applications and the evaluation of proposals will apply. The mai...

erc.europa.eu

Going to #Cosyne2025? Check out our researchers’ posters and talks: www.sainsburywellcome.org/web/content/... @cosynemeeting.bsky.social

First preprint from our lab! An @jerlich.bsky.social collaboration We developed novel frameworks to study multi-agent decisions in mice. Mice flexibly shift their decision preference under social competition, by integrating real-time self and opponent information! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Mice dynamically adapt to opponents in competitive multi-player games

Competing for resources in dynamic social environments is fundamental for survival, and requires continuous monitoring of both 'self' and 'others' to guide effective choices. Yet our understanding of ...

biorxiv.org