1/6: New publication from the lab: “Plastic landmark anchoring in zebrafish compass neurons” by Ryosuke Tanaka (@ryosuketanaka.bsky.social) and Ruben is available here: rdcu.be/eX1L4

Also I am actively looking for a PI position! In principle I am hoping to stay in Japan, but please do reach out if you happen to know any opening for which I might be a fit, regardless of place!

Another major update: I am finally back in Tokyo after 8 years! Starting this January, I am a postdoc in the lab of @fumikubo.bsky.social at RIKEN CBS, with a continued support from HFSP. My plan is to dig deeper into the circuit surrounding the head direction neurons.

My paper on the head direction neurons in the larval zebrafish is now published on Nature! Read it here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

*First preprint from our lab* !!!!! How does the brain learn to anchor its internal sense of direction to the outside world? 🧭 led by Mark Plitt @markplitt.bsky.social & Dan Turner-Evans, w/ Vivek Jayaraman: “Octopamine instructs head direction plasticity” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Thread ⬇️

A paper from my PhD lab is on Science! This is a really cool new way to utilize EM connectome datasets. Congrats to the team! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A study on distance estimation in flies from my PhD lab is now on @currentbiology.bsky.social ! www.cell.com/current-biol...

Our study on optic flow memory in fish is now on Current Biology: www.cell.com/current-biol...

I'm back in Japan for the Japanese Neuroscience Society meeting last week in Niigata. It was a great opportunity to reconnect with old friends and meet new colleagues. Sushi was also excellent.

Bit late, but I was at the Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting at the beginning of the month. The topic was a bit out of my expertise, but I learned a lot about chemistry, met a lot of great people, and above all thoroughly enjoyed being at another corner of Freistaat Bayern.

Our review is on the cover! www.nature.com/nrn/volumes/...

As I transitioned from studying Drosophila to the larval zebrafish, I have been noticing a lot of interesting parallels between their visual systems (esp. tectum vs. lobula), which I feel are not talked about enough. We explored these analogies in depth in our latest review: tinyurl.com/3hvkhsyk

As I am posting these, I am in Awaji island, Japan, for the Cold Spring Harbor Asia conference starting today. The last time I was here I was like 5. The landscape is incredible.

Check out my new preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Here I run a bunch of psychophysics experiments to better understand how the larval zebrafish🐟 remember the past optic flow in the context of stabilization behaviors.

1/3 How does visual input affect the heading direction (HD) network? In our latest lab preprint, Ryosuke presents "visual landmarks" to larval zebrafish and shows that the HD network tethers to the visual environment. The experiments are again inspired by the beautiful recent work in Drosophila.