This September, I will join the @flatironinstitute.org Center for Computational Neuroscience as a Group Leader, where I will launch the High-Dimensional Dynamics & Computation Group. Information for postdocs and grad students is forthcoming. I am grateful to my mentors who made this possible!

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

🚨We’re moving! 🚨 Starting this fall, my lab will be moving to the Center for Neural Science at NYU and the Center for Computational Neuroscience at the @flatironinstitute.org. 1/

🚨 Big news 🚨 After 10 years at Harvard, my lab is moving to Barcelona in Spring 2027 to join @cbc-upf.bsky.social and the Department of Engineering at @upf.edu. 1/4

My department, Neurobiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington (nbio.uw.edu), is hiring a new tenure-track Assistant Professor, application deadline 09/30/26. It's a broad search — molecular to organismal, all of neuroscience/physiology/biophysics welcome. apply.interfolio.com/187735

Interested in multitasking RNNs from a theory perspective? Check out this preprint with the amazing @lpezon.bsky.social. TLDR: A low-rank / latent space approach to @lndriscoll.bsky.social & @sussillodavid.bsky.social style shared components. And a story starring solution space degeneracy.

Louis Pezon@lpezon.bsky.social · last mo.

Both brains and RNNs can re-use components of computation across similar tasks or contexts. But what exactly are those “shared components”? How can they be used to solve several tasks? We address these questions in a new preprint with @avm.bsky.social! Link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Excited to share that I’ll be joining Columbia's Zuckerman Institute as an assistant professor of neuroscience, starting in September! 🧵

Tremendously excited to announce that I will be joining @rockefeller.edu as an Assistant Professor and Head of Lab starting in January 2027! My group will be broadly focused on theoretical neuroscience, and mathematical problems in neural computation in the large.

Spontaneous problem-solving in bumble bees. Amazing work by the bees who were put in these puzzling situations by @akshayebhambore.bsky.social in the lab of @olliloukola.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Evolution seems to have repeatedly converged on a similar architecture in the early olfactory system of many animals. We offer an efficient-coding framework to understand this. Out in @pnas.org now! Led by @jzv.bsky.social, driven by Juan Carlos, + help from Farhad. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Why Evolution Keeps Returning to the Same Solution for Smell 🧠 🧪🧬 #AcademicSky #higherEd www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n... @neurovenki.bsky.social @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social @pnas.org @harvardbrainsci.bsky.social @jzv.bsky.social @rachellegaudet.bsky.social @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social

Why Evolution Keeps Returning to the Same Solution for Smell - Harvard University - Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology

Why do animals as different as insects and mammals process smells in nearly the same way? A new theoretical study published in PNAS takes on this question by […]

mcb.harvard.edu

🧠👃A new study by #KempnerInstitute associate faculty member Venkatesh Murthy & collaborators shows that maximizing information recreates an olfactory design shared by multiple species. Out now in @pnas.org: bit.ly/4uQ6Omw @neurovenki.bsky.social @jzv.bsky.social #neuroscience

New AI-based Framework Could Explain Why Evolution Gave So Many Species the Same Smell Circuit - Kempner Institute

Why do the smell circuits of flies, mice, and humans look so remarkably alike? A new study from Harvard researchers offers a possible explanation: this shared design may be the […]

bit.ly

Travelling to COSYNE seems to be the perfect opportunity to announce that I started my own lab at RWTH Aachen University earlier this year, funded by NRW's Ministry of Culture and Science through its Return Program. If you are at COSYNE and want to chat please reach out!

If you're at #cosyne2026 in Lisbon, come check out Juan Carlos Fernández del Castillo's poster 1-007 tonight, based on our paper on efficient coding in olfaction (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...)!

NEW: #Kempner researchers develop a mean-field theory of task-trained RNNs that bridges random and learned connectivity—and find macaque motor cortex is best captured by an intermediate, task-specific recurrent structure. Read the blog post 👇 🔗 bit.ly/47f3Ldl

I am totally pumped about this new work . "Task-trained RNNs" are a powerful and influential framework in neuroscience, but have lacked a firm theoretical footing. This work provides one, and makes direct contact with the classical theory of random RNNs: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How do past sensory experiences prepare us for new ones? Our new paper tackles this long-standing question, revealing a role for activity sequences in the olfactory bulb. Excited to share our work led by @jonvgill.bsky.social with Mursel Karadas & Shy Shoham www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

What is the computational role of dendritic excitations? Byung Hun Lee and team mapped voltage dynamics throughout the dendritic trees of CA1 pyramidal neurons in mice navigating in virtual reality. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Have you ever wondered what you would find if you could keep your eyes on a bee for more than a few meters? Us, too! preprint (with videos!) + thread 🧵 Precise, individualized foraging flights in honey #bees 🐝 revealed by multicopter drone-based tracking www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/9

First paper from the lab! We propose a model that separates estimation of odor concentration and presence and map it on olfactory bulb circuits Led by @chenjiang01.bsky.social and @mattyizhenghe.bsky.social joint work with @jzv.bsky.social and with @neurovenki.bsky.social @cpehlevan.bsky.social

bioRxiv Neuroscience@biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Simultaneous detection and estimation in olfactory sensing https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.01.686013v1

Happy to see this long-in-the-making collaboration with @paulmasset.bsky.social out on bioRxiv!

Paul Masset@paulmasset.bsky.social · 9mo ago

First paper from the lab! We propose a model that separates estimation of odor concentration and presence and map it on olfactory bulb circuits Led by @chenjiang01.bsky.social and @mattyizhenghe.bsky.social joint work with @jzv.bsky.social and with @neurovenki.bsky.social @cpehlevan.bsky.social

Simultaneous detection and estimation in olfactory sensing https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.01.686013v1

Now in PRX: Theory linking connectivity structure to collective activity in nonlinear RNNs! For neuro fans: conn. structure can be invisible in single neurons but shape pop. activity For low-rank RNN fans: a theory of rank=O(N) For physics fans: fluctuations around DMFT saddle⇒dimension of activity

Connectivity Structure and Dynamics of Nonlinear Recurrent Neural Networks

The structure of brain connectivity predicts collective neural activity, with a small number of connectivity features determining activity dimensionality, linking circuit architecture to network-level...

journals.aps.org

This week's sensorimotor superlab reading list is out https://superlab.ca/posts/2025-09-05-list302.html @andpru.bsky.social @diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social @gribblelab.org #neuroskyence #psychscisky #Sensorimotor

Since I'm back on BlueSky - with @frostedblakess.bsky.social and @cpehlevan.bsky.social we wrote a brief perspective on how ideas about summary statistics from the statistical physics of learning could potentially help inform neural data analysis... (1/2)

Frontiers | Summary statistics of learning link changing neural representations to behavior

How can we make sense of large-scale recordings of neural activity across learning? Theories of neural network learning with their origins in statistical phy...

frontiersin.org

Happy to see this collaboration with @neurovenki.bsky.social out - featuring great work by Juan Carlos!

Venki Murthy@neurovenki.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Excited to share new computational work, led by @jzv.bsky.social, driven by Juan Carlos Fernandez del Castillo + contribution from Farhad Pashakanloo. We recover 3 core motifs in the olfactory system of evolutionarily distant animals using a biophysically-grounded model + efficient coding ideas!

Excited to share new computational work, led by @jzv.bsky.social, driven by Juan Carlos Fernandez del Castillo + contribution from Farhad Pashakanloo. We recover 3 core motifs in the olfactory system of evolutionarily distant animals using a biophysically-grounded model + efficient coding ideas!

Convergent motifs of early olfactory processing are recapitulated by layer-wise efficient coding

The architecture of early olfactory processing is a striking example of convergent evolution. Typically, a panel of broadly tuned receptors is selectively expressed in sensory neurons (each neuron exp...

biorxiv.org

Excited to share our latest!! Thanks to everyone involved especially @neurovenki.bsky.social!

Venki Murthy@neurovenki.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Thrilled to share this work, long time in the making! Carried through creatively by @siddjakes.bsky.social after initial design & piloting by @trackingskills.bsky.social, with help from @trackingactions.bsky.social. Modeling in collaboration with Massimo Vergassola & Nicola Rigolli.