Extremely cool!

Yichen Luo 骆奕辰@camellyc.bsky.social · 2d ago

1/8 Breathing seems automatic. But it's a finely tuned motor behavior that has to be controlled. In this preprint, I map the circuits that match a fly's respiration to the metabolic demands of flight and mitigate the risk of dehydration. 🧵🪰 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

1/8 Breathing seems automatic. But it's a finely tuned motor behavior that has to be controlled. In this preprint, I map the circuits that match a fly's respiration to the metabolic demands of flight and mitigate the risk of dehydration. 🧵🪰 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Very happy to share our new review on visual computation in the cephalopod brain, with @vangeliqueallen.bsky.social, out now! We discuss exciting recent advances in understanding how the radically different brain of cephalopods processes the visual scene. 🐙🔬👀 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The Sauerbrei Lab at Case Western Reserve University is recruiting a postdoctoral scholar to work on neural dynamics and motor control: apply.interfolio.com/189987

An extraordinary study of Cezanne’s composition that proceeds by comparison of his paintings with photos of his motifs. One of my favorite examples from the Cleveland Museum: the pigeon house at Bellevue.

How do you "see" with electric eyes? How does collective behavior emerge from individual interactions? Nocturnal weakly electric fish evolved to do this, but studying naturalistic social behavior is very hard. Our solution? Virtual 'fish' 🤖🐟⚡ 📄 arxiv.org/abs/2511.08436

If an action results in error, each neuron requires an individualized teaching signal that guides change in its output. This is the credit assignment problem of learning. Are there neurons in the brain that can compute such a sophisticated teaching signal? Yes. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Climbing fibers encode the gradient of a loss function for the cerebellum

Neurons in the brain are often many synapses away from motoneurons, yet if a movement results in error, each distant neuron needs a teacher that considers its specific contribution to production of th...

biorxiv.org

Happy Monday! Come learn how jellyfish swim. In a review led by fluid dynamics maestro Alex Hoover, we outline how neuromechanical modeling will help us understand how modulation of neural activity allows jellyfish to jet and pirouette through fluids www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We're hiring! Postdoc position to study the neural control of reaching using high-density multi-area electrophysiology. 5 years of funding, great collaborative environment. Please share with anyone who may be interested. For details, see: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Pruszynski Postdoc 2026

Postdoctoral Researcher, Control Policies in the Primate Motor Circuit Pruszynski Lab @ Sensorimotor Superlab​ The Pruszynski Laboratory at Western University is seeking a postdoctoral researcher to j...

docs.google.com

A vital addition to the library!

Exciting news! Our lab has been awarded an ISF-Breakthrough Grant to investigate how subcortical signals shape local and inter-areal cortical interactions during motor learning. We are now recruiting PhD students and postdoctoral fellows. Interested? Send me a message or email.

🧠 New preprint alert! 🧠 Leo led the heroic effort to improve how we map connections across large cortical networks in macaques—stably—over weeks to years. The secret sauce: a combo of optogenetics + µECoG + new signal processing to localize stim-driven responses. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Combining phase analysis and causal stimulation enables longitudinal mesoscale connectivity mapping

Uncovering the circuit mechanisms of flexible behavior requires characterizing how neural signals propagate across large-scale networks and tracking how those networks evolve over time. Signal propaga...

biorxiv.org

The July 2026 issue of #ScienceRobotics is out! This month's cover features a robot that can switch between different motor skills to jump over logs and navigate varied terrain using a new control framework. Learn about this research and more: scim.ag/4aRI2dk

#TodayinHistory #dataviz #Onthisday #OTD 📊 💀Jul 18, 1650 Christopher Scheiner died in Niesse, Poland 🇵🇱 1626: Visual representations used to chart the changes in sunspots over time, the first known use of small multiples, giving a sense of animation

Bungee-jumping mice may reveal why astronauts skip on the Moon | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Bungee-jumping mice may reveal why astronauts skip on the Moon

Low gravity puts a bounce in the step of humans and rodents alike

science.org

From a great collaboration with @lorenzoposani.com, @shuqiw.bsky.social, Samuel Muscinelli, Liam Paninski, now in Nature: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Rarely categorical, highly separable representations along the cortical hierarchy - Nature

Cortical circuits prioritize diversity over categorical structure, supporting a computational regime geared towards high-dimensional, highly separable neural representations.

nature.com

And, of course, Eb Fetz was the prophet of this whole direction, with this paper from 1992, but that reads like it was written 30 years later: depts.washington.edu/fetzweb/asse...

Thanks @phiejacobs.bsky.social for featuring our work in @science.org! Why did Apollo astronauts skip on the Moon? Our study shows that reduced gravity reveals a proprioception-dependent mechanism for locomotor state selection. @alesantuz.bsky.social leading the way to the moon 🐭🚀

David Grimm@david-grimm.bsky.social · 3w ago

The first foot set on the Moon was famously one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. But did you know there was a spring in that step? And do you know why? Fun story by @phiejacobs.bsky.social for @science.org

Excited to share this work, led by Andrew Zimnik and Sherry An, from @mchurchland.bsky.social and my labs! www.cell.com/neuron/fullt... 1/2

Sparse component analysis: A method that uncovers separable computations within neural population activity

Zimnik et al. provide a new, interpretable, unsupervised dimensionality approach for neural population activity. Their approach, sparse component analysis (SCA), reveals the latent factors correspondi...

cell.com

Neuroscientists: Given that most NHP studies are roughly n=2, what is considered best practice for interpreting results that conflict across monkeys? #neuroskyence

An interesting observation by Warren McCulloch in 1955.

1/N Excited to share a major update to this work, which includes (1) identification of a thalamocortical communication subspace, (2) cortical lesions which induce selective behavioral deficits, and (3) extraction of cortical readouts by EMG decoding. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Thread:

Britton Sauerbrei@brittonsauerbrei.bsky.social · last yr.

1/N How do neural dynamics in motor cortex interact with those in subcortical networks to flexibly control movement? I’m beyond thrilled to share our work on this problem, led by Eric Kirk @eric-kirk.bsky.social with help from Kangjia Cai! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

An obituary looks back on the life of Avis H. Cohen, who bridged the disciplines of neuroscience, math and engineering to decode lamprey locomotion. By @sarahthau.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/locomotion/r...

Remembering Avis H. Cohen, who bridged disciplines to decode lamprey locomotion

The founding director of the University of Maryland’s Neuroscience and Cognitive Science program brought neuroscience, math and engineering together.

thetransmitter.org

Excited to move to the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota in the fall. We will continue our work on neuromodulators and behavior. Positions available in the lab. Please get in touch if interested, and share broadly! hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/374... hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/374...

The Neural Control & Computation Lab is recruiting a Postdoctoral Fellow to investigate the neural basis of learning, flexible neural computation, and skilled movement control using large-scale electrophysiology from single-neuron populations in non-human primates 🧠🐒 www.ncclab.ca/join-the-lab

A brain implant is helping a man with paralysis to communicate with his family and friends and to use his personal computer at home go.nature.com/4xN2O7Z

At-home brain implant gives man with motor neuron disease his daily life back

The device has helped a man with motor neuron disease communicate and control his computer for nearly two years.

go.nature.com

Homeward bound! After a successful postdoc at Penn State, I'm thrilled to be heading back to Canada to join the University of Guelph faculty in neuroscience and applied cognitive sciences. Bring on the next chapter!

Many of the scientific questions we're interested in tackling require studying learning over long periods of time across the brain. This is challenging – which is why we're excited to say we've been developing a system for chronic wireless recording using long Neuropixels probes in macaque monkeys.

Natural behavior unfolds as a continuous stream of actions. Because these actions often occur in rapid succession, the brain must prepare multiple future actions while the current action is being executed. Our TICS piece explores how this works. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...