Happy belated publication of some of my PhD work! Building on our findings that grid field firing rate changes can cause hippocampal remapping and memory impairment, here we show that this effect has a fixed input-output relationship, and we can even predict how place cells will remap!

Turns out deep neural networks are better at extracting relevant features than I am... Meet "DeepUnitMatch", a DNN version of our neuron tracking tool: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... It has been a privilage to continue the collaboration with Célian, and cosupervise the talented Suyash & Wentao!

What drives the sequential emergence of spatial neurons in developing rats? In our ICLR 2026 paper, we show how changes in movement statistics drive spatial tuning. Our model replicates experimental timelines and predicts novel conjunctive tuning maturation. doi.org/10.64898/2025.12.30.696864

Check out our commentary on a recent paper arguing that neural activity in the (lateral) entorhinal cortex intrinsically drifts over a month-long period in humans. With @virginievanw.bsky.social @vigano.bsky.social and Raphaël Bordas. www.eneuro.org/content/13/1...

We had a lot of fun doing these experiments! Theta sweeps in MEC and internal direction signals in parasubiculum track moving objects during pursuit and reverse during backward movement. Simultaneously recorded HD cells in other areas remain locked to head direction across behaviors:

Another fascinating study by the group showing modulation of theta sweeps across different behaviors: chasing, backward walking. Go dig into it. Kudos to the authors!

I’m excited to share my first PhD preprint!🎉 We studied how interactions between medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) and hippocampus shape theta sequences during navigation, and asked whether some “planning-like” patterns in hippocampus could arise from upstream MEC dynamics. (1/8)

When and why do modular representations emerge in neural networks? @stefanofusi.bsky.social and I posted a preprint answering this question last year, and now it has been extensively revised, refocused, and generalized. Read more here: doi.org/10.1101/2024... (1/7)

Wanna compare dynamics across different systems? See our fast and furious method developed by us (@armanbehrad.bsky.social @mmdtaha.bsky.social, @neuroprinciplist.bsky.social) together with our wonderful collaborators! You can already use our code: github.com/CMC-lab/fast...

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... We had a lot of fun working on this project (led by Itzel Ishida, not on bluesky). Some interesting highlights from the paper -

Do you love quantifying animal behavior as much as we do? We have just the tool for you! Presenting #OCTRON - a pipeline that helps you create rich annotation data and enables training of custom segmentation models. Have a look, particularly if you work with non-model / invertebrate organisms!

What is a 🧠 ripple? See our @cellpress.bsky.social perspective on ripple diversity and the grammar of memory replay: connecting key pieces from current work across the field. 👉🏼 www.sciencedirect.com:5037/science/arti...

How does a neuron get its activity? 👀 Check out our latest preprint, where we tracked the activity of the same neurons throughout early postnatal development: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... see 🧵 (1/?)

QQ5: What is the developmental timeline of the low-dimensional manifolds of the entorhinal cortex? Rings and tori organize at P9-P10 before major sensory-motor milestones, coinciding with other major shifts in MEC cortical dynamics. @me

Poster QQ9: Theta sweeps can track moving bait and go backwards! In our poster, we describe situations in which the stereotypic left-right alternating theta sweep pattern is modulated to cover behaviorally relevant space @azvollan.bsky.social

QQ8: What drives the left–right alternation of theta sweeps? Whether a central-pattern generator (CPG)-like circuit is involved? @rajatsxn.bsky.social

Still at SfN on the last day? During the morning session on the 19th, 8:00AM - 12:00PM, come check out our posters from the Moser, Zong, and Gonzalo Cogno groups in row QQ ('Grid cells and spatially modulated cells'). Ephys, imaging, remapping, development, sweeps and more! 🧠 Detailed thread below 👇

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...

I’m pleased to share our new paper, “Hippocampal ripple diversity organizes neuronal reactivation dynamics in the offline brain”, out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social ! With @vitorlds.bsky.social and David Dupret, we show that diversity in ripple current profiles shapes reactivation dynamics

Neuropixels Ultra! By @steinmetzneuro.bsky.social, who led a big collaboration www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

1/8 How can the brain create countless unique memories using a single, universal metric of space? We’ve been waiting for the answer to this for two decades! Read it here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/5 How does the brain turn the low-dimensional, universal grid cell metric into the rich, diverse codes needed for memory in hippocampal place cells? 🧵 Preprint link 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/ 🚨 New preprint! 🚨 Excited and proud (& a little nervous 😅) to share our latest work on the importance of #theta-timescale spiking during #locomotion in #learning. If you care about how organisms learn, buckle up. 🧵👇 📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 💻 code + data 🔗 below 🤩 #neuroskyence

🚨New preprint alert! The thalamus has long been seen as a relay of sensory signals to cortex. But could it also generate its own structured activity? Our study explores this question in the head-direction (HD) system. Some explanation 🧵👇 1/13 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thrilled to share that our work is now published in Science! ✨ We found a preference for visual objects in the mouse spatial navigation system where they dynamically refine head-direction coding. In short, objects boost our inner compass! 🧭 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵1/

Check our new preprint where we examine how enriched experiences alter synaptic connectivity and coding sparsity across the neocortex.

This is a super interesting paper from Bruce McNaughton’s lab, showing why we should study behavior in the context of natural/ecological environments. They show that living in enriched complex environments, prior to task performance, affects both behavior and the underlying neural activity.

When neurons change, but behavior doesn’t: Excitability changes driving representational drift New preprint of work with Christian Machens: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

In many brain areas, neuronal tuning is heterogeneous. But how does this diversity help behavior? We show how tuning diversity shapes representational geometry and boosts coding efficiency for perception in our new preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... (w/ @sueyeonchung.bsky.social&Tony Movshon)

A new study led by @timothysit.bsky.social reveals that different layers of mouse V1 integrate visual and non-visual signals differently. Activity is dominated by vision (or spontaneous fluctuations) in L2/3 and by movement in L5. This leads to different geometries. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I'm pleased to share our new work, “Spatio-temporal organization of network activity patterns in the hippocampus”, out in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social ! With Demi Brizee & David Dupret, we track how oscillations and spiking behaviour map onto hippocampal layers using an LFP-based embedding. (1/13)

Our collaboration - from PhD work - examining input-specific (EC L3) contributions to rate and temporal coding in CA1 place cells is now out in @natcomms.nature.com 🔬🧠 rdcu.be/evWtz

Super excited to see this paper from Armin Lak & colleagues out! (I've seen @saxelab.bsky.social present it before.) www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... tl;dr: The learning trajectories that individual mice take correspond to different saddle points in a deep net's loss landscape. 🧠📈 🧪 #NeuroAI

Our study is out in Nature! Using wireless Neuropixels we recorded hippocampal activity in freely flying bats and uncovered replay and theta(less) sweeps, revealing striking differences from classic rodent models. 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Do you do Neuropixel recordings and are you struggling with preprocessing? The Power Pixels pipeline is an easy-to-use pipeline from raw data to neural activity of single neurons in specified brain regions 🧠 Now on bioRxiv! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Our work with Maxim Bazhenov's group showing interleaved replay of new and old memories within individual Up states using a combination of biophysical modeling and electrophysiology experiments.

Your brain doesn’t just passively track time ⏳ - it structures it. In @Science.org we show that activity in 🧠 memory circuits (LEC) drifts constantly, but makes sharp jumps at key moments, segmenting life into meaningful events. (1/2) 👉 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Our new paper out now in Science explores how neural activity in the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) *drifts* over time - and *jumps* at key boundaries - to help organize events in memory. 🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Here's a quick summary of what we found 🧵👇

Your brain learns for you even when you're not actively learning. Maybe. (in mice).

Kilosort4 detects a LOT of neurons, I recorded 15k neurons in one year 🤯 Traditionally, one would curate these detected units to see if they are well isolated single neurons. This is not feasible anymore, so today let's look at three options that are out there to automate this process! 🤖👇

Over the past few years, I’ve shared my personal journey as a sleep scientist living with sleep apnea with other scientists and students to raise awareness and reduce stigma. I’m excited to reach an even broader audience in my recent interview with Parade 🎉 parade.com/health/i-fel...

As I transition over to Bluesky I have to plug our new #book. If you haven't already, check out the 2nd edition of The #Hippocampus Book! academic.oup.com/book/59509?s...

New opinion paper in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social with Dan Bendor, where we argue that rodent studies provide only marginal support for the idea that replay supports real-time decisions (e.g. planning). Fictive learning and memory tagging are more consistent w/evidence. www.cell.com/trends/neuro...

Excited to share the sequel to our 2022 paper! In this follow-up, we show that the stable head direction (HD) signals we reported in blind mice rely on stereo olfaction—that is, the comparison of odor info. between the two nostrils. Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵highlights below

We're bringing together leading researchers from top institutions worldwide to Split, Croatia this summer. If you're passionate about brain-inspired AI, computational neuroscience, or fundamental mathematical principles driving intelligence, this conference is the place to be!

Many of us use 2p scopes to image 3D volumes of brain. But then we analyze the data plane by plane, resulting in duplicated neurons, missed neurons, and low s/n. Let's go 3D! Suite3D: Volumetric cell detection for two-photon microscopy by @haydari.bsky.social & team. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Finally a new textbook for theoretical neuroscience. Xiao-Jing Wang wrote a nice book with very broad coverage of the field. Highly recommend. www.amazon.com/Theoretical-...

"How are memories formed and stored in the brain?...Long-term memory acquisition was found to be associated with a selective increase in multisynaptic boutons..". Groundbreaking new study from my friend and colleague Anton Maximov's lab: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Bonus: My son Luca's first pub

Applications are open for the summer school 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗡𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. compneuronrsn.org Application deadline: March 31, 2025 Located in beautiful Eresfjord, Norway 🇳🇴 #Neuroscience #ComputationalNeuroscience #KavliNeuro @kavlintnu.bsky.social

Exciting new paper from David Dupret's lab, showing that hippocampal CA1 ripples can be categorized in 2 types, either driven by CA3 or entorhinal inputs, & are associated with different replay content. The categorization only requires pyramidal layer recording. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...