🚨New preprint doi.org/10.64898/2026.06.07.730682. We show that zebrafish larvae exhibit complex, internally generated, spontaneous behavioral patterns in the absence of stimuli. These dynamics can be described by a simple Markov process with transition probabilities that change over time.

Congratulations to our bachelor student @valentindsr.bsky.social on successfully defending his bachelor's thesis! 🥳 Under the supervision of postdoc Margherita Zaupa, Valentin's dedication helped to pioneer targeted electroporation in the lab, laying the foundation for future work.

We are excited to share our collaboration with @pheereynolds.bsky.social, Robert Hindges & team on retinal plasticity, now out in Neuron! This work shows how visual experience during early development changes the anatomical and functional properties of amacrine cells and ultimately behavior!

Early visual experience elicits cellular and functional plasticity in the retina and alters behavior

The understanding of experience-dependent plasticity in the vertebrate retina is largely incomplete. Reynolds et al. discovered that raising animals in differently patterned visual environments change...

cell.com

Congratulations to our bachelor student Anna on a fantastic defense, supervised by postdoc Margherita Zaupa. In a remarkably short time, she used molecular biology techniques to make real progress on mapping where ribosomes are located in larval zebrafish neurons. 🧠🐟

New paper out: www.cell.com/iscience/ful... Congratulations to our former PhD student @maxcapelle.bsky.social whose work reveals that the switch in light preference across zebrafish development is driven by a reweighting of three parallel visual processing pathways. Check out a short summary below!

Bahl Lab @bahllab.bsky.social · last yr.

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 👇

What a great start to the summer with @elefp.bsky.social and @syddoingscience.bsky.social representing the lab at the Neural Basis of Natural Behaviors conference!🧠 From worms to humans, the talks reflected an exciting new direction in neuroscience toward studying the brain in natural environments.

A huge congratulations to Katja, who defended her PhD last week 🎉 As one of the lab's founding members, she played a pivotal role in shaping the lab from its earliest days, and her hard work, passion, and scientific curiosity have set the bar high. We look forward to her next scientific adventures 🚀

How do development and genetics shape evidence integration? 🧠 In our new preprint, we dissect how sensory evidence accumulation over time guides decisions. Want to know more? Keep reading or or come to Roberto's poster 1-003 this Thursday at #Cosyne2026. (1/4) Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202...

New paper out: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🥳 Congratulations to our PhD student Katja for her inspiring work just published in Nature Communications on how the larval zebrafish brain processes multiple visual features. Check out a short summary of the work here: tinyurl.com/yzv4ct9k

Bahl Lab @bahllab.bsky.social · 12mo ago

How do brains make decisions when faced with multiple, potentially conflicting cues? In our latest preprint, we show how #zebrafish use an additive strategy and process multiple visual features through anatomically distinct parallel pathways tinyurl.com/mvkn8em9 Thread 👇

Another memorable Bahl Lab Winter Retreat made even better by having the Vogt and Bollmann labs join us for two days of sun, snow & science! 🌞❄️

Congrats to Philipp and Vincent supervised by our post-doc Margherita for each successfully and fantastically defending their bachelor's thesis today! Wishing them both the best of luck with their future endeavors 🎂🥳

it’s offishial ! the end of the year is upon us and what a year it has been. wishing happy holidays to all and a fishtastic new year! 🐟✨

Congratulations to the lab's first PhD student @maxcapelle.bsky.social for defending his PhD last week! Max not only helped shape the lab from day one, but also made outstanding scientific achievements, which have laid the foundation for future research. Wishing him all the best 🥳

Congrats to Margherita 🥳 a post-doc in the lab who was awarded a Walter Benjamin Position from the @dfg.de to investigate how zebrafish integrate predator and social cues during collective escape responses.

Congratulations to Susanne (mentored by post-doc @mehaj.bsky.social) for successfully defending her master's thesis investigating neural dynamics in the larval zebrafish brain 🥳 Wishing you the best of luck with your #jobsearch for a PhD position!

How do brains make decisions when faced with multiple, potentially conflicting cues? In our latest preprint, we show how #zebrafish use an additive strategy and process multiple visual features through anatomically distinct parallel pathways tinyurl.com/mvkn8em9 Thread 👇

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 🎙️

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 👇

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.

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.

9A Spezial: Exzellent gefragt - How the Brain decides

9B · Episode

open.spotify.com

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

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)

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...

biorxiv.org

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.

Meet @kimkirchberger.bsky.social– our physics master student who found himself captivated by the wonders of neuroscience. After finishing his master’s thesis, he is now continuing his project in the lab while actively seeking a PhD position to continue his scientific journey. #BahlLabPeople

Celebrated our first #Labsgiving! We are thankful for being able to bring together such an international and diverse group of people whose cooking creativity made this event possible!