I ran into Clara in Transylvania last year, which eventually lead to a fun chat with her and Carolina - open.spotify.com/episode/6Yl4... They have a cool series going over here!

115. Wild Minds: Mapping Bat Cognition in the Wild (with Dr. Saikat Ray)

Neuroverse · Episode

open.spotify.com

🚨 New paper in @nature.com We asked why two hippocampal areas with very different anatomy, CA3 and CA1, often seem to code space so similarly? By recording bats flying up to 200m, we found that the difference was hidden by scale! www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵 1/11

Sparse-to-dense coding transformation between hippocampal areas CA3 and CA1 - Nature

The hippocampus exhibits a CA3-to-CA1 coding transformation that combines fast learning with an efficient, compressed neural code.

nature.com

Bat brains code space similar to how bird brains code songs, so now 🦇 == 🕊️? 😅 Cool stuff from Shir Maimon and @tamir-eliav.bsky.social

International Society for Neuroethology@neuroethology.org · 2mo ago

New paper from Ulanovsky's group: With brain recordings from🦇 flying in a 200m tunnel, the group discovered that place cells of CA1 exhibit dense spatial coding, i.e., multiple place fields, and cells of CA3 exhibit ultrasparse coding, i.e., one place field. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How do social netowrks form and evolve? We looked at a bunch of bats to explore this! doi.org/10.1111/nyas...

When you navigate busy streets, a set of neurons is helping to guide you. But it’s not easy to simulate mental map-building in a lab. Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/h... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/50Fx...

How Animals Build a Sense of Direction

Podcast Episode · The Quanta Podcast · 02/17/2026 · 24m

podcasts.apple.com

This is Latham Island, a seven-acre speck of land in the Indian Ocean. Here, neuroscientists recorded the brain activity of Egyptian fruit bats as they explored the novel habitat to study the animals’ "internal compass" in the wild, beyond the lab. www.quantamagazine.org/how-animals-...

How does your brain build a sense of direction? New studies into animals’ internal compass could help explain the feeling of getting “turned around”, or even why some of us are so bad at finding our way. @yaseminsaplakoglu.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/how-animals-...

How Animals Build a Sense of Direction | Quanta Magazine

Researchers documented the activity of neurons that shape directional navigation as bats explored a remote island off the coast of Tanzania.

quantamagazine.org

Made summer travel plans yet? How about a trip to Greece? This conference looks fantastic! conferences.weizmann.ac.il/NBNB2026/spe...

The Ulanovsky lab will have 6 posters Monday afternoon: 1 lab, 1 tunnel, 3 island, and 1 lab on the island (don't ask), SS6-SS11 Come say hi!

Naturalistic approaches such as Ulanovsky’s open up “potential opportunities to really reveal why the brain is structured in the way it’s structured,” says Iain Couzin. By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/neuroetholog...

Diving in with Nachum Ulanovsky

With an eye toward realism, the neuroscientist, who has a new study about bats out today, creates microcosms of the natural world to understand animal behavior.

thetransmitter.org

Neuroscience projects last several years, and you are usually a bit jaded by the time you wrap it up. Not this one– spending several months on an island in the middle of nowhere, away from all the craziness of the world reminds you how beautiful the world really is. www.youtube.com/watch?v=46sv...

Bat Island: The New Era of Science

YouTube video by Weizmann Institute of Science

youtube.com

I am excited to share my PhD work on head-direction cells recorded in the wild, now published in @science.org, where we recorded neurons in bats flying outdoors on an island. doi.org/10.1126/sci... With @ray-neuro.bsky.social, Shir Maimon, Liora Las, Nachum Ulanovsky and many others

The work with bats on barren, 7-acre Latham Island was Nachum Ulanovsky’s most complex undertaking yet. By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/neuroetholog...

DOI is not up yet, but this is the link: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Head-direction cells as a neural compass in bats navigating outdoors on a remote oceanic island

Animals and humans rely on their navigation skills to survive. However, spatial neurons in the brain’s “navigation circuit” had not previously been studied under real-world conditions. We conducted an...

science.org

This is such a fun meeting. If you are in social neuroscience - you should come. Heck even if you are not - the science is great in general! And a fun mix of animal and human research! Next time in Canada!

Society for Social Neuroscience (S4SN)@s4sn.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Saykat Ray observed natural behavior in fruit bats 🦇 and found that spatial place cells also encode social information. These place cells are a cognitive map of the social environment! 😱

🦇 In a bat colony, neurons build more than a map of space. They code for identity, interactions, and social ties, creating a socio-spatial “map” of the community and social life itself! Read the full story 👉 zurl.co/JInQs 🧪 #HFSPFellowships #sts #HFSPscience

See you in Lisbon next week!

Society for Social Neuroscience (S4SN)@s4sn.bsky.social · 12mo ago

✨ Exciting news for our upcoming S4SN Lisbon meeting! ✨ Join us from September 23-26 for a dynamic program filled with inspiring talks, poster presentations, and networking opportunities. Get ready to connect, learn, and share ideas in the beautiful city of Lisbon! The program is out 😍

Really interesting study showing learning of tool use in carrion crows! www.cell.com/current-biol...

I'm usually not very active here, but good news: Together with @milliejohnston.bsky.social, our paper on time estimation in #crows got published in @natcomms.nature.com today! We found crow neurons track time like a stopwatch — without a cortex! 🐦⏱️🧠 #SciComm #Science 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A neuronal correlate for time interval estimation in the crow’s telencephalon - Nature Communications

It is unknown how birds estimate time using brains organized differently from mammals. Here, the authors show that neurons in the crow NCL encode duration categories, supporting abstract, cue-independ...

nature.com

Michael Brecht talking about why the differences in brain size in elephants might be more important than the differences in their ear sizes @behaviour2025.bsky.social

Hope to see you on Monday! This will be fun!

Saikat Ray@ray-neuro.bsky.social · last yr.

Come visit Calcutta in the last week of August and see some amazing neuroscientists talk about the neural basis of behaviour at @behaviour2025.bsky.social With @neuroetho.bsky.social @danielavallentin.bsky.social @selmaan.bsky.social @arkarupbanerjee.bsky.social and Michael Brecht!

Have you registered yet? 😁 Secure your spot at #S4SN2025 at share.google/vRumlIDQBNLX... and join us this September in beautiful Lisbon! ✨

Society for Social Neuroscience (S4SN)@s4sn.bsky.social · last yr.

⭐ Join Us in Lisbon! ⭐ We're excited to announce our upcoming Lisbon meeting, featuring a lineup of inspiring symposiums and renowned speakers! ✨ #Conference2025 #S4SN2025 #socialneuroscience #symposum #TravelAward

The new issue is out👉https://www.cell.com/cell/current ⁠ On the cover, Eliav et al. reveal that hippocampal replays in bats flying in very large, naturalistic environments were highly fragmented and short, depicting trajectories covering only a small portion of the environment size.

🚨Very happy that my PhD work is now out in @nature.com! We discovered that evolution, by acting in the midbrain, shifted the threshold to escape in Peromyscus mice, to fine-tune defensive strategies in different environments www.nature.com/articles/s41... This was a truly collaborative effort! 🧵⬇️

"I look forward to the day when Israeli scientists can freely collaborate with scientists in Iran and do good for the region and for humanity. I wish the same for scientists in Gaza and throughout the Middle East." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

How we’re rebuilding the Weizmann Institute — and our hopes for a better future

Scientific research is at the heart of Israel’s success and has worldwide benefits. Our work will continue despite adversity.

nature.com

Come visit Calcutta in the last week of August and see some amazing neuroscientists talk about the neural basis of behaviour at @behaviour2025.bsky.social With @neuroetho.bsky.social @danielavallentin.bsky.social @selmaan.bsky.social @arkarupbanerjee.bsky.social and Michael Brecht!

Please join us in Lisbon for the 2025 S4SN (@s4sn.bsky.social) meeting this year. We have a wonderful set of speakers and symposium sessions!! 👇👇

Very, very cool paper from @tamir-eliav.bsky.social and the Ulanovsky lab! www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

Fragmented replay of very large environments in the hippocampus of bats

Hippocampal replays in bats flying in a 200-m tunnel depict short fragments of long flight trajectories, suggesting constraints on the mechanisms and functions of replay.

cell.com

Happy 99th birthday to the man who gave voice to the wild. 🎉 Sir David Attenborough, thank you for a lifetime dedicated to the natural world, and for sharing its story with wisdom, wonder, and grace. You've inspired generations to fall in love with nature.

How to understand the brain through the lens of natural behaviour? Here's Nachum's vision on exploring the whole range - from lab experiments to those in the wild. Join us in this adventure as we uncover what the brain does under the conditions it has evolved in. mitpress.mit.edu/978026204499...

Natural Neuroscience

Natural neuroscience departs from the classical reductionist approach, which emphasizes control at the expense of natural behaviors, by proposing a shift tow...

mitpress.mit.edu