This definitely forbidden gummy is in fact a moth larva of genus Olona (possibly Olona zolotuhini). It's *normal* to want to know what flavor it is, but the answer, unfortunately is "pain". Most species in this family are covered in tiny stinging spines connected to poison glands. (📷: Janice Ang)

Vectorial efference copy and visuomotor transformation through gap junctions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.11.744090v1

🚨 4 new positions for postdoctoral research available at our @zukunftskolleg.bsky.social in beautiful Konstanz! If you are interested in exploring collective behaviour at the interface of theory and experiment, then consider applying! ⚠️ Deadline October 12 stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/4...

Four 2-year Postdoctoral Fellowships at the Zukunftskolleg

Application Deadline: 12 October 2026, 11:00 am (CET)

stellen.uni-konstanz.de

Our paper was covered in @thetransmitter.bsky.social. Exciting!

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 2w ago

Fish open their eyes even while the circuits within are developing. A new study shows that what they see in these early stages transforms retinal interneurons and behavior. #neuroskyence By @siddhantpusdekar.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/developmenta...

I am very excited to present our work on social modulation of behavior in Drosophila larvae at the #IUSSI2026 🪰 - sneaking in between all the cool social insects 😊

The animal is the same. The stimulus is identical. Yet the behaviour varies. Why? In our new study, @ashritocyte.bsky.social explores the sources of this behavioural variability under fully controlled conditions in larval zebrafish doing optomotor response. (1/7) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Opposing influences of sensory and response history in larval zebrafish

Variability is a prominent feature of animal behavior across species. Despite highly controlled experimental conditions, the same individual often responds differently to repeated identical stimulatio...

biorxiv.org

🚨🦋 Thrilled to share my first PhD paper published in PNAS this week, in collaboration with Sören Kannegieser and @anna-stoeckl.bsky.social @insect-vision.bsky.social: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... We found hawkmoths use a convergent visual control strategy for appendage guidance. 👁️🫳 🧵 below.

Anil Seth, Bernardo Kastrup and Christof Koch discuss the latest insights from psychedelic research, as well as their different viewpoints on the epistemic value of psychedelic experiences and what metaphysics these experiences point to. youtu.be/zTqFZwbX3Zc

Idealism vs Materialism Debate | Christof Koch, Bernardo Kastrup & Anil Seth

YouTube video by Essentia Foundation

youtu.be

A great privilege of science is working with remarkable people. A nice piece highlighting @mindyisminsu.bsky.social. Her grit, esp through the pandemic, was foundational to the #BANC project. hms.harvard.edu/news/making-...

Making Connections, in the Brain and in Science

PhD student Minsu Kim gained confidence, experience in the lab of neurobiologist Wei-Chung Allen Lee

hms.harvard.edu

Stronger punishments get better results? Not for this hawkmoth 👀🚫 Check out our new paper where we link sensory ecology to colour discrimination learning in an insect pollinator. Shout out to co-authors @anna-stoeckl.bsky.social and @jjfosterlab.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.an...

Exciting work by @pheereynolds.bsky.social and the whole team on how visual experience shapes neural structure and function is now out in Neuron! Check it out!

Phoebe Reynolds@pheereynolds.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I’m very excited to share that our paper is now out in Neuron! 🎉

I am very happy to have participated in this amazing project with @maxcapelle.bsky.social and Katja Slangewal! 🥳 Through virtual reality and agent-based modeling, Max revealed the visual algorithms of the behavioral flip from light- to dark-seeking as zebrafish transition from larvae to juveniles.

Bahl Lab @bahllab.bsky.social · 2mo ago

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!

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.

Amazing!

Jan Lause@janlause.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Meet Eyewire II: a new connectomic resource for the mouse retina. ~1 mm² of retina at nanometer resolution, with synapses and circuits of ca. 100,000 neurons, plus visual responses from the ~400 neurons shown in the video! Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202... Data: eyewire.ai 🧠📈 🧠💻🧪 #VisionScience

New amazing work by my dear friend @gkolyfetis.bsky.social modeling polarization vision in different bee species! Check it out! 🚨

George Kolyfetis@gkolyfetis.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I am thrilled to share my second PhD manuscript! We modelled bee polarisation vision and tested two navigational models. Many thanks to @jjfosterlab.bsky.social and all our collaborators (@egkanias.bsky.social,@edinburgh-uni.bsky.social,@insectlabsu.bsky.social) for such a productive collaboration!

Do bright lights change how you dance? 🔆💃 Waggle-dancing honeybees interpret bright UV & green as the sun, but dim UV as a patch of sky. Thanks Keram Pfeiffer @uni-wuerzburg.de for trusting me with your data & @jgraving.bsky.social for the circular GLMM. doi.org/10.21203/rs....

Just out: VoR of our novel cost-benefit analysis of eye design. Applied to simple and compound eyes, discovers that photoreceptor costs shape design of entire eye, explains why diurnal insects have world's longest photoreceptors, and revises scaling of acuity with eye size. doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

Investments in photoreceptors compete with investments in optics to determine eye design

Allocating space, materials and energy to an eye's optics and photoreceptor array is a major factor in eye design that explains obvious differences between simple eyes and compound eyes.

doi.org

Prediction without understanding sustained astronomy through a thousand years of epicycles, writes @tonyzador.bsky.social. AI is now offering neuroscience the same deal. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/machine-lear...

Can AI do neuroscience without understanding?

Prediction without understanding sustained astronomy through a thousand years of epicycles. Artificial intelligence is now offering neuroscience the same deal.

thetransmitter.org

In 1986, John White published "The Mind of a Worm," the first complete wiring diagram of any animal's brain. 7,000+ synapses in C. elegans, mapped by hand. This year he won the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences. And he's donating his share to OpenWorm.

Dutch film-maker Jan van IJken condensed 4 weeks of development in a salamander embryo (Mesotriton alpestris) into a 6 minute video, presented here sped up to 1 minute. You can see gastrulation at ~the 10s mark, forming the gut, then limbs & in a moment, the heart just *begins* beating.

for more about the fascinating study organism Stentor — a veritable giant of the unicellular universe — see this quick guide www.cell.com/current-biol...

Stentor coeruleus

In this Quick Guide, Salobnik and Marshall provide an overview of the ciliate Stentor coeruleus, which has a rich history as an experimental organism but was hidden from view for a number of years, on...

cell.com

Deepa Rajan, PhD@deeparajan.bsky.social · 4mo ago

How can a single cell learn without a brain? We explore this in my paper with @wallaceucsf.bsky.social! We discovered that single cells may learn using molecules similar to those that animal brains use to learn, like CaMKII. Cells can also propagate memory states to their progeny!

New work w/ Zach Kelso and @madeleinecsnyder.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Our negative results on classical conditioning in planarian flatworms. This was surprising, given the long history of work (including sensational findings of memory transfer and retention through decapitation).

@gkolyfetis.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de presenting his work on bee navigation at the annual meeting of the Beekeepers of Baden in Radolfzell 🍯🐝. Thank you for the invitation! Great to see the public interest in science and find out what we can learn from each other. 👁️🧭

New @currentbiology.bsky.social paper from Dr. Leila Elabbady on neural circuits that transform a touch stimulus into spatially targeted grooming. Leila discovered a leg somatotopic map and used it to infer tactile receptive fields in the fly VNC connectome. authors.elsevier.com/a/1mvu83QW8S...

🥳

Bahl Lab @bahllab.bsky.social · 4mo ago

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 🚀

Final version of record here: elifesciences.org/articles/107... Enjoy tracking

New idtracker.ai rethinks multi-animal tracking as a representation learning problem to increase accuracy and reduce tracking time

Identification of each animal in a collective becomes possible even when individuals are never all visible simultaneously, enabling faster and more accurate analysis of collective behavior.

elifesciences.org

eLife@elife.bsky.social · 6mo ago

🛠️ February’s most-read Tools and Resources paper introduces idtracker.ai to rethink multi-animal tracking: buff.ly/Ho0b3xz Learn more about publishing your tools or resources with us: buff.ly/pivLQX0

🧵 New preprint led by @bingbrunton.bsky.social, @elliottabe.bsky.social, @lawrencehu.bsky.social We gave a worm brain control of a fly body and it walked What did we learn? Nothing, other than deep reinforcement learning is effective We call it the digital sphinx www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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...

Check out this amazing piece of work by my friend Dario!

Dario Tommasini@dariotommasini.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Inhibitory neurons are among the most transcriptomically diverse class of neurons in the CNS, with some brain regions having 60+ distinct cell types. Do humans share the same repertoire as rodents? Birds? Fish? 1/13

Go Katja!!! 🥳

Bahl Lab @bahllab.bsky.social · 6mo ago

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